Quick Review #37: "xxxHoLiC"

Title: xxxHOLiC / ホリック

Rating: 3 /10 

Recommended for: 

Those who like Ninagawa Mika's works or films with a strong artistic flavour

Liked:

- True to Ninagawa's usual directorial and artistic style, the movie was a visual feast in terms of the abundance of rich colours and the effort put in the set and characters' costumes.

Disliked: 

- The issue with Ninagawa's style is, while it may be captivating initially for the viewers, I personally found that the sensory overload became too much of an issue as the movie progressed. Too much of a good thing can be bad as well.

- Disclaimer: I haven't read the manga in full but know the basic setting of the story at the very least. The thing is, there is so much content to be covered in one film and that always becomes a bugbear when dealing with adaptations of long-running original source material that get too ambitious for their own good. When you try to cut-and-paste parts of a long story to form a 2-hr movie, the connections between each arc or section becomes a key factor in determining whether the story is going to flow properly. Unfortunately, I found that this movie was so disjointed and the developments just jumped from one part to another and didn't flow logically. In the end, it felt as if I watched a collage of events but they just didn't gel as one. It was a pity that the essence of the title referring to addictions in modern society was hardly touched on, save for the part featuring Shuri which came and ended out of the blue. And as to why Domeki and Himawari did what they did for Watanuki, the significance of that and their rationale were lost on me. The most critical thing was, there wasn't much about the relationship dynamics of Yuko and Watanuki so it left me wondering, was that all? For those who may not know the source material. they may probably be less critical than me though. I just wish that the time spent on looping what happened on 1 April could be better spent elsewhere.