Rating: 
Summary: Spotlight on Japan's obsession with food
Review: Comedy doesn't always travel that well, and I think 'Tampopo' is one of those examples. I'm sure a lot of the content is meant to be parody and not taken at face value. But from my vantage point, Tampopo seems to do a good job at documenting Japan's often bizarre obsessiveness about food. 'Tampopo' goes for long stretches without being one bit funny (coverbox advertising to the contrary). Instead, it goes on and on about ramen (noodles) - how to source, make, cook, market and sell them. As a case study on how to open a restaurant and attract & retain customers, it has a lot of insightful things to say. Cowboy-like trucker 'Goro' could pass for a restaurant consultant, with insightful tips on proper food preparation, taking orders accurately and quickly, making eye contact with customers. All stuff that any successful restaurant needs to do to stand out in the marketplace. Imagine a rags-to-riches movie put together by a production team from 'Iron Chef.' All that's missing is Chairman Kaga showing up to announce this week's featured ingredient for the ramen. Not that a Kaga appearance would have been entirely unexpected here. There's a main storyline in the movie that occupies about 85% of the screen time. But there are 3 - 4+ other vignettes that are inserted - seemingly at random - each dealing with some aspect of food obsession. I kept waiting to see how it would all come together. It doesn't. It's like director Juzo Itami had four to five ideas for a movie, all half-baked except one. Yet he decided to share them all in one serving. Without fail, the inserted stories are bleak, disturbing and distracting. When focusing on the main Tampopo/Goro tale, its a fairly enjoyable film with good insights on the Japanese culture.
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious, but sometimes a little wandering
Review: This is comedy on low heat. The humor starts out subdued and stays that way throughout the movie. Taken scene by scene, this would be the recipe for a lukewarm movie, but taken as a whole the comedic tension boils over from the constant pressure applied by director Juzo Itami. The story is simple and direct. Tampopo, a young ramen shop owner who can't make a good bowl of soup meets Goro an old, noodle-wizened truck driver and they strive together to turn her into a ramen master. They run into obstacles along the way starting with the gangsters that overrun her shop to finally Tampopo's own self-doubt. In the end, everyone is happy and triumphant except for one ramen shop owner who loses all his customers to Tampopo's revitalized ramen shop. It's very much styled after American Westerns with the costumes and the sets. Set against a story about something as Japanese as ramen it adds a touch of hilarity. Itami's manner of coaxing humor out of ordinary situations is refreshing. If humor is taking something normal and twisting it for a different view, then Itami's method is to only make the smallest twist possible for the maximum effect. Itami's habit of lingering in scenes is also interesting, as it gives the actors a chance to act using body language and facial expressions in lieu of dialog. The effect is that the viewer believes that he is looking in on the actual life of the character; a life that continues even when the scene has ended. When Goro drives away in the last scene and the gangster-turned-interior designer stands in the middle of the street, the feeling of bittersweetness is palpable. The only thing that detracts from the story... I can't really say detracts... The only thing that I didn't particularly care for were the tangential scenes that didn't have anything to do with the main plot. By tangential, I mean completely separate and irrelevent to the plot. The scenes in themselves were funny, but at the end of the movie they all hung out as loose ends with no conclusion. It is almost like Itami had all these good ideas for funny scenes but simply couldn't find a way to tie them together so instead of trying he just threw it in as-is and stirred the pot. Maybe that was what he was after? It's a great movie and you'll love it. 4 enthusiastic stars for this one.
Rating: 
Summary: A feast of a movie!
Review: I first owned this on laser disk (The Beta-Max of DVD formats..)
This movie is excellent. It's a comedy and a study of how
people relate to food in so many, many different ways. I can't
think of a single person who wouldn't love this film.
Rating:
Summary: The quintessential ramen movie
Review: This movie is just like good ramen - a perfectly homely base with lots of goodies thrown in for good measure. This was the first Japanese movie I'd seen besides the whole Godzilla thing. It is so delightful at times and so confusing at other times that it provided me a good starting point for seeing other Japanese movies. The story is so familiar and yet handled so differently that you can't wait to see what comes next. I actually loved the gangster scenes just because they seemed so out of left field and yet so appropriate to the tone of the movie. If you love Japanese dramas like Kurosawa, this movie may not be for you, but if you liked 'Shall We Dance', you'll probably like this one too. But be prepared for strangeness!
Rating:
Summary: A charming film about food, love and life...
Review: Tampopo is clearly one of the most charming and witty films I've ever seen. Appropriately known as a "Japanese Noodle Western", Tampopo tells the story of a woman's journey toward achieving 'noodle nirvana' with the help of a cowboy truck driver and his network of epicurean misfits. Besides the primary plot, Itami interjects short scenes that emphasize the linkage between food, love, sex, passion, family and life itself. Frequently funny and always entertaining, Tampopo is a film to be enjoyed over and over again. Like a good bowl of exquisitely prepared udon, Tampopo will invariably leave you feeling warm, refreshed and satisfied...
Rating:
Summary: The art of eating
Review: If you like good food, you surely know how to enjoy it. This film is a good example of showing people how they can enjoy the food. First, it started from an old man teaching how to eat a bowl of ramen (Japanese word for noodle) and continued with how to make a bowl of good ramen. The director adapted the style of Western Cowboy film by creating the truck driver as a unnamed hero just like Clint Eastwood who helped the helpless shop mistress in redeveloping her ramen business. There are several side issues go in between the main theme thus make this film interesting. Highly recommended espcecially if you are a connoisseur of good food.
Rating:
Summary: Unusual Title, Great Food Movie
Review: I caught this film by accident on satellite, watched it a minimum of 5 times and rented it twice. Now I'm purchasing it, I have to have it that bad! Having lived in Japan (I have family there), I'm well aquainted with the casual ramen restaurants literally on every corner. This movie presents an insider's view of the actual workings behind the counter along with vignettes of ties between food, sex, death, manners, loyalty, crime, etc. The connection between the milk of human kindness (the mother breastfeeding) and the milk truck driver who assists Tampopo seems to have slipped most people.
Being pretty fluent in Japanese, I have to comment that the subtitles are not all accurate but...a great movie nonetheless!
Rating:
Summary: Missing Mischievous Scene w/Painter by the little boys
Review: Is it my imagination or does my dvd not include the two important scenes to Tanpopo where the kids tease the painter on the wall? I tried looking for it in the scene index to no avail. I believe that this can only be found on the VHS copy. For this, I'm a little bit disappointed in an otherwise nice DVD. One last thing; since it's widescreen, it would have been nice to put the subtitles in the black area underneath the scenes instead of above it right into the scenes in white color.
Rating:
Summary: Memorable and funny
Review: This is not an incredible movie, not in my top 100, not even in my top 200. But it is funny, and it has some incredible scenes and moments that I will never forget. Really - trust me. I wouldn't ever want to watch it again, but I'll never forget it.
Rating:
Summary: The Masterpiece of a late legend!
Review: This film, like all Juzo Itami's films is extremely well researched, funny, fast paced and explores its subject to great depths - this one being about food and the natural human desire to make, serve and eat the best dishes possible. The underlying story between the lines is food's connection to the erotic and egotistical sides of human nature. Very well made and fantastically well acted by the whole cast but this is especially true of star and real life widow, (Nobuko Miyamoto), of the late Director who at the peak of is his career commited sucide by jumping for the roof of his offices for no apparent reason. This considered, although the film world has lost a great talent, Mr. Itami's suicide is just more evidence of the draw backs and pluses associated to somone who posseses that caliber of genius mind.
| 
