Big Dreams Little Tokyo
Big Dream Little Tokyo needs to come out with the mention "This is my first movie made with $200.000... so give me a break". A break I am gladly giving considering I have enjoyed the story & have a great respect on someone trying to pullout such enterprise all by himself. I could have been sitting on my tatami, counting the editing mistakes and other oddities you wouldn't like to find in a Million $ budget Hollywood movie... but the characters, the situations & comical cross-cultural circumstances were able to take me away from my usual "anal"ytic critic of a work.
The movie is filled with C-list actors only Tarantino would have been salivating employing. Dave Boyle, the director/producer of this movie, casted himself on playing a young "business man" trying to sell a book on language skills (among other business & personal business cards), he wrote & published himself, destined to teach English to Japanese living in the US. He is set with a roommate Jerome (Jayson Watanabe) Japanese American wanting to become a sumo wrestler. The story revolve on their struggle with their own interpretation of the Japanese cultural identity.
The script of Big Dream Little Tokyo reflects the oddities of Dave Boyle himself trying to pierce in the movie industry, without any background in film making, speaking Japanese without having visited the country & filming the entire piece in Salt Lack City Utah.
I believe Mr Boyle is onto something by focusing on ridiculous situations generated by cross-cultural identities. Probably a genre we could call "cross-cultural comedy". The next movie in production is called "white on rice" with a budget of $500.000. My hope is that his movies do not attract only a niche audience... and distributors will be interested enough to give it a try. -Big Dream Little Tokyo Official site-
