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Critics Consensus: Tokyo Tribe's wild mishmash of tones and genres isn't always as much fun as it ought to be, but it'll hit the spot for filmgoers in search of something different.
Critic Consensus: Tokyo Tribe's wild mishmash of tones and genres isn't always as much fun as it ought to be, but it'll hit the spot for filmgoers in search of something different.
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All Critics (32) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (17) | Rotten (15) | DVD (1)
The nearly two-hour run time starts to feel like a concert where the hype men won't get off the stage.
There's a strange power to Sion's filmmaking that goes beyond the midnight-movie oddness of the plot. He likes the silly and the strange, but he has the style of a Spielberg; he can work wonders with a camera and make the dumbest ideas work.
It's as if the American hip-hop culture has been fully lost in Japanese translation and skewed as something cartoonish.
It's an infectiously over-the-top and unquestionably idiosyncratic mess, but it only holds together for as long as you're impressed by its commitment to an admittedly novel premise.
The cumulative effect ... is numbing.
The novelty factor fades midway through, and not even the bizarre sight of a (computer-generated) tank rolling down the streets and bombing buildings could really sustain or amplify the flagging energy of it all.
Outwardly frivolous, frenetic and fueled with a bizarre combination of opulence and outlandishness, Tokyo Tribe will indeed stimulate the senses with its hodge-podge of hedonistic heft in the realm of instantaneous insanity.
What makes Tokyo Tribe ultimately unique, if still problematic in its sheer amount of chaos, are the underlying politics.
One of the joys of Japanese cinema is how it not only wholeheartedly embraces genres, but also happily mixes them up.
Even to call it a perverted ultra-violent dystopian Japanese gang war hip-hop musical, while covering all the bases, would miss what makes the film so indelible.
The novelty wears out long before Tokyo Tribe is over. That's because there's nothing really happening here except for the execution of the novelty.
Masquerading as a hip-hop martial arts musical, Tokyo Tribe is mostly just a puerile male fantasy come to hypercolor life.
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