Sad Vacation

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59%

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User Ratings: 381

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Movie Info

A damaged man experiences a series of odd coincidences that send his life careening down a path he never anticipated in director/screenwriter Shinji Aoyama's semi-sequel to his critically acclaimed 2000 drama Eureka. When Kenji was just a young boy, his mother abandoned the family and his father committed suicide. These days Kenji (Tadanobu Asano) can't seem to hold down a regular job, instead choosing to work part time as a designated driver for tipsy bar hostesses and their randy clients. Occasionally, he even assists local gangsters in trafficking illegal immigrants. Everything changes for Kenji, however, when in just a matter of days he meets both the woman who will bear his future child as well as his own long-missing mother Chiyoko (Eri Ishida). Now, as Kenji ponders the depressive realization that his mother left he and his father behind in favor of starting a new family, the past and the future come crashing together, forcing the uncertain drifter to try and make sense of his own fractured existence. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Rating:

NR
Genre:

Art House & International, Drama
Directed By:

Shinji Aoyama
Written By:

Shinji Aoyama
In Theaters:

Dec 31, 2007 wide
Runtime:

136 minutes
Studio:

Sponge

Cast

Tadanobu Asano
as Kenji

Eri Ishida
as Chiyoko

Aoi Miyazaki

Joe Odagiri

Yuka Itaya

Ken Mitsuishi

Critic Reviews for Sad Vacation

All Critics (3) | Top Critics (1) | Rotten (3)

Only those already won over by recent Shinji Aoyama will coddle to Sad Vacation, the prolific helmer's latest overlong, confused meditation on family and abandonment.

July 9, 2008 | Full Review…

Jay Weissberg
Variety
Top Critic
An almost Capraesque folksy moralism takes root, but the ramshackle story keeps shifting gears awkwardly.

October 12, 2018 | Full Review…

Dan Sallitt
Senses of Cinema
There's something willfully obscurantist about Sad Vacation, as if it is, first and foremost, a private joke between writer/director Shinji Aoyama and his performers.

July 9, 2008

Keith Uhlich
UGO