Thursday, July 12, 2012

MEMORIES OF TOMORROW (2006)

Masayuki has a nice life filled with a loving wife, an easy job as a manager at an advertising agency, a pretty house and a daughter that's about to get married. Then he starts to forget things. At first, it's small stuff like his car keys or an exit on the highway, but soon his forgetfulness becomes more pronounced and he's forgetting meetings. At his wife's urging he goes to the doctor and it's even worse than they ever feared: at age 49 Masayuki is in the early stages of Alzheimer's and within no time at all he'll be what they call in the medical field: all fucked up.

I'm normally not into these person-with-a-heart-of-gold-gets-sick tearjerkers since they're predictable and depressing, but this one stars Kazue Fukiishi so I wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, her role is pretty small. Ken Watanabe does a great job as the sick guy and Kanako Higuchi is touching as his patient wife, but as I suspected even before I even sat down to watch this film: it's too predictable to be truly enjoyable. Blah, blah, hard working man, gets sick, heart of gold, tears, The End.

Worth watching, I guess, if you're into this sort of thing, but as for me, outside of the brief Kazue Fukiishi moments, I was pretty bored and I'll never watch it ever again.