This review has spoilers, but how can you spoil something that is already rotten? I picked up this awful movie to show to my kids and had to apologize to them afterward. It's partly my fault as I saw Miyazawa and thought Miyazaki, the genius behind Totoro, Castle in the Sky, Kiki, etc. Unlike those movies, 'Night' is completely unenjoyable. From the title and the blurb on the box, I was expecting a fun adventure on a train ride across the galaxy. What I got was a painfully slow story, filled with disjointed surrealism, overtly Christian preachiness, and a depressing ending.
The movie starts off introducing Giovanni as a boy who is struggling in school and is picked on by classmates because his father is late coming back from a fishing expedition in the North Sea. He is also shown working hard for little money at a printer's shop so he can help provide for his sick mother. The introduction section is relatively long and uninteresting, but it could have been bearable if the rest of the movie made up for it. At the end of the initial part of the movie, Giovanni tries to go to the town's Centaurus festival but is teased away by a his classmates once again. He runs off to a field, falls asleep and is awakened by a steam train appearing out of nowhere.
OK, now we get to the part where the poor picked on kid gets a fun romp around the galaxy on a train, right? Nope. They turn a trip through the galaxy into a series of disjointed surrealist images, loosely based on the constellations. You get to see a fossil dig under their city unearthing 1.2 million year old walnuts (why?) An old man catching heron, which apparently taste like candy, and an observatory of Alberio that looks like the yellow and blue stars of Alberio being used as a lighthouse beacon. None of these scenes are very interesting, but they leave you hoping something coherent will happen.
Unfortunately the something that happens that make things a little more coherent is that the movie becomes preachy. Hymns, prayers and stories about how great it is to sacrifice your life. Yech! The box should have had warnings on it for the preachy content.
After a stop at the Southern Cross (heaven) the boy's one true friend who's been with him on this journey jumps off the train. The boy then wakes up back in the field where he was asleep and soon finds out his friend died rescuing another of their classmates from drowning.
So there you have it, depressing, preachy and dull all rolled into 1 bad movie. Don't bother with it, and don't subject poor innocent children to this stinker.
The movie starts off introducing Giovanni as a boy who is struggling in school and is picked on by classmates because his father is late coming back from a fishing expedition in the North Sea. He is also shown working hard for little money at a printer's shop so he can help provide for his sick mother. The introduction section is relatively long and uninteresting, but it could have been bearable if the rest of the movie made up for it. At the end of the initial part of the movie, Giovanni tries to go to the town's Centaurus festival but is teased away by a his classmates once again. He runs off to a field, falls asleep and is awakened by a steam train appearing out of nowhere.
OK, now we get to the part where the poor picked on kid gets a fun romp around the galaxy on a train, right? Nope. They turn a trip through the galaxy into a series of disjointed surrealist images, loosely based on the constellations. You get to see a fossil dig under their city unearthing 1.2 million year old walnuts (why?) An old man catching heron, which apparently taste like candy, and an observatory of Alberio that looks like the yellow and blue stars of Alberio being used as a lighthouse beacon. None of these scenes are very interesting, but they leave you hoping something coherent will happen.
Unfortunately the something that happens that make things a little more coherent is that the movie becomes preachy. Hymns, prayers and stories about how great it is to sacrifice your life. Yech! The box should have had warnings on it for the preachy content.
After a stop at the Southern Cross (heaven) the boy's one true friend who's been with him on this journey jumps off the train. The boy then wakes up back in the field where he was asleep and soon finds out his friend died rescuing another of their classmates from drowning.
So there you have it, depressing, preachy and dull all rolled into 1 bad movie. Don't bother with it, and don't subject poor innocent children to this stinker.