3 gibbles out of 5

Director: Takashi Miike

Andromedia will almost certainly be viewed by one of two kinds of people: 1. Takashi Miike fans, and 2. J-Pop fans. If you stumble across the movie elsewise, I’m sure it must seem like a silly piece of Japanese fluff, and it probably is. I fall into the former category, and “Andromedia” was the first Miike movie – initially – that made me feel like he was a hack. This was after joining the club with Audition and Ichi, and watching Andromedia in comparison to these films is a bit of a stretch. However, years later, after coming back to Miike and watching his ouevre with more openness and a sense of the whole 70+ films (I’ve only seen around 25, but I’m getting there), I can accept this as another puzzle piece into Miike’s film history.

Tom Mes has an excellent blurb (from his book) on the DVD that explains how the J-Pop film fits into Japanese history, and it adds a bit more explanation to the film. Various people claim this as satire or a joke, and while there are flashes of Miike littered in the film, it’s also just another experiment from the man. It’s a pretty basic, silly thing – a girl’s “soul” is downloaded into a computer, and some bad guys want that technology – but it’s fun, for the most part, and has a well shot car chase.