And I didn’t even understand 40% of it. So don’t treat this as a serious review - just a blogger’s rant.

Of course, I have my biases about the flower boys in the first place: My first encounter with them was when they were used as an excuse to start a boy band in Taiwan for “Meteor Garden”, and since then, the so-called Flower 4 has never sat right with me. But with the Japanese counterpart hitting the big screen, making a ton of money, and a shoot that went all over the world, I expected some high-energy silly fun, even if it is about boys compared to flowers (Of course, the whole title is Japanese wordplay. “Boys” in Japanese share the same sound as the Japanese sweets “dango”.). So I went, like most of the other men in the screening, accompanied by a member of the opposite sex. Now I know what a Sex and the City screening must’ve been like.

The trailer, which show central couple Makino and Domyoji running around the world in an adventure, promises such energetic silly fun (exploding cars in Hong Kong? The two doing Castaway on an abandoned island?). The film itself starts off just fine, with the two about to get married when a very very expensive family heirloom is stolen. As a result, the two run off around the world to get the heirloom back, with a little (and I mean very little) help from the other flower boys. That’s it. Really.

However, the filmmakers somehow managed to make everything drag. Apart from the first 20 minutes, there’s no sense of fun at anywhere they go. Dialogue scenes are shot from a distance, as if they’re trying to show TBS and Toho shareholders where they spent their money on by showing as much of where they are as possible. The movie was shot on digital video, with no cinematic flair whatsoever so one can hardly find any difference between the actual movie and the flashbacks from the TV drama. With TV dramas shot like movies these days, you would figure that Hana Yori Dango Final would looks better on the big screen. You’d be wrong - I’ve seen Japanese dramas shot better than this so-called movie.

Of course, I don’t even deserve to review the film if I didn’t understand 40% of the dialogue. Actually, when I can tell a film is bad just by understanding 60% of it, doesn’t it make it worse? I didn’t understand 50% of Gururi no Koto (most of those scenes involve lots of dialogue), either. For all I know, it may be a total embarrassment once I find out what the rest of the movie is about, but the acting, the directorial technique, the editing all told me at that point that there’s something better beyond the written word for all 140 minutes. Hana Yori Dango didn’t have that.

The so-called script simply boils down to two people arguing all the time, especially Jun Matsumoto (whose perfect boy  band hair stays perfectly waxed even on an abandoned island) and his arrogant and loud bad boy voice screaming in every other scene. His surface tough-guy exterior becomes increasingly irritating along the way. On the other hand, Mao Inoue was fairly likable as the girl next door, but even her acting is relegated to simply reacting to events along the way, as oppose to actively doing anything. When she’s not being told something, then she’s just arguing with Domyoji, which  makes me wonder why these two are together in the first place if they talk like that to each other every day. Worst of all, of these adventures boil down to an anti-climatic “that’s it?” resolution that would make you hate rich people like the flower boys for the resource they use for their excessive luxury. Then again, you probably won’t, because they’re still rich and handsome.

Perhaps that’s why it’s such a favorite with the female audience. This is essentially porn for virgin schoolgirls and women who dream of being like protagonist Makino - your poor girl next door swept away by four rich handsome guys who lavish her with attention and luxury like champagne on private planes and pools in presidential suites. Men has the same type of latent fantasy, they’re called action movies.

Don’t mistaken me as a TV drama adaptation hater, either. As much as I don’t like the trend, I actually think drama adaptations can be quite well-done. At least Hero and Bayside Shakedown earn their 2-hour+ runtime with complicated cases that take multiple steps to untie the knots. Hana Yori Dango runs 131 minutes, which is way too long to pull off what the story turned out to be.

I suppose not having seen the drama, I must not be in the position to judge this film. Actually, the filmmakers do their best to let the uninitiated understand what’s going on, and a film should be able to stand on their own as a film instead of a 2-hour episode of a TV show. That’s why people criticized the second and third installments of Lord of the Rings as not real films, because they aren’t “complete” films with a beginning and an end. But at least those films are miles away better shot, better written, and better acted than Hana Yori Dango, which looks like it was shot for TV, and that’s where it belongs.

Still, girls will probably still flock to it for the same reason they would flock to a Daniel Henney movie - Jun Matsumoto appears topless in one scene. Wet. While saying “I love you” to a girl.

By the way, here’s the exact reason why the film did not deserve a 131-minute running time.

MAJOR ENDING SPOILERS:

The so-called family hairloom was a fake, and was a scheme concocted by Domyoji’s mother and father to test the couple’s love. Everyone was in on it, hence meaning that everything that appeared in the film is false and artificial. Just like the manufactured emotions and endless verbal expositions.

Consider yourself warned.

- Our first and foremost jobs here at Lovehkfilm is to review movies, and we got some of those for you today. Boss Kozo has a review of Lawrence Lau/Scud’s City Without Baseball, a review of Korean hand ball flick Forever the Moment, a review of the Taiwanese film Soul of a Demon, and a review of Japanese dark comedy Funuke, Show Some Love, You Losers!. JMaruyama offers a review of Kwak Jae-Young’s Cyborg She, which he insists is a remake of Park Chan Wook’s I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK, and that’s OK too. I myself offer a review of Don’t Laugh at My Romance and a review of cute puppy film A Tale of Mari and Three Puppies.

- It’s Japanese Oricon charts time! As expected, Arashi’s theme for the Hana Yori Dango movie debuted at the top, with an impressive 300,000+ copies sold. Shuchishin (aka the “stupid boy band”.  Really, that’s their nickname) not only survived to their second single, but also manage to sell 200,000+ copies of it. The album chart was also fairly crowded, with GReeeN!!! taking the top position for the first week of their second album, Ayaka’s 2nd following close behind, and Ketsumeishi debuting at a somewhat disappointing 3rd place. My newest idol Jero debuts at 5th with his first album.

More at Tokyograph.

- China loves Kung Fu Panda, as it has already become the most successful animated film ever in China with a box office take nearing 100 million yuan after 10 days. I don’t get that two days’ delay in Sichuan, though, which sounds more like distributor’s indecision more than anything else.

The earthquake didn’t exactly affect people’s moviegoing mood anyway, as May’s box office is up 26% from the previous year, prompting China Film Group to post a cryptic message that seem to spell either showing off or amazement.

- The Japanese news shows were all over a Wall Street Journal story this morning, which compared the rather unpopular Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda with current TV Prime Minister Kimura Takuya. Click on the first link, since going directly to the site won’t let you read the whole story.

-  Kaiju Shakedown’s Grady Hendrix looks at what’s going with The Warlords‘ western distribution ambitions, which has now dwindled down to a butchered DVD release.

- A bit late: Jason Gray offers a look by Midnight Eye’s Jasper Sharp on how Tartan UK came to meet their current fate of closing down.

- Lionsgate will be working with CJ Entertainment for Korean Wedding, aka “How Another White Man Falls in Love with Asian Girl and Finds Asian Culture Funny”.

- Taiwan may take a very significant step in continuing to improve relations with China by lifting their ban on Mainland Chinese performers, even though Taiwanese performers have been performing in the Mainland for years.

- An ad sales slump for Japanese television is causing board member of these TV stations to go from earning tons of money to earning just lots of money.

- After the success of the Ayaka-Kobukuro duet Winding Road, their record company is back for round two with another duet to be released.

Or otherwise known as the weekly number crunching edition.

- The end of the academic year in Hong Kong schools and two major blockbuster openings add up to a very crowded weekend at the Hong Kong box office. On 64 screens (a majority of them showing the Cantonese-dubbed version), Kung Fu Panda won the weekend. Opening on a Saturday (instead of the usual Thursday), the Hollywood animated film made HK$3.41 million for a 2-day total of HK$6.47 million. The other huge film was the action film Wanted, which opened on a Friday. From 47 screens, it made HK$2.49 million on Sunday for a 3-day total of HK$7.37 million. While it seems like Kung Fu Panda won by a stretch, their per-screen average are close enough to indicate that the audience are fairly split evenly between the two films. With a public holiday today, the two films will easily surpass the HK$10 million mark.

It was also a pretty busy weekend for the limited releases. The French film Ensemble (starring Audrey Tautou, who has become quite popular in Hong Kong after Amelie) made HK$84,000 from 4 screens on Sunday for a 4-day total of HK$260,000. The Las Vegas-themed 21 continues it strong run, making HK$51,000 from 3 screens on Sunday with a 11-day total of HK$520,000.

With the major blockbusters, the holdover films obviously lost out of plenty of audience. The Chronicles of Narnia probably managed to retain its Christian audience after losing its family audience to Kung Fu Panda, with a HK$409,000 take from 30 screens on Sunday. After 25 days, the fantasy epic has made HK$24.55 million, with HK$25 million a certainty. Johnnie To’s Sparrow lost its adult audience (and plenty of screens/showings) to Wanted, making only HK$245,000 from 30 screens (most of them with a reduced number of showings a day) and a 11-day total of HK$4.92 million. It’ll do better than Triangle and way better than Linger, though.

- The cat’s out of the bag now: the Hana Yori Dango film version is a major hit at the Japanese box office, making over 1 billion yen from 400 screens in the first two days alone. According to Eiga Consultant, this is 99% of the opening weekend gross of Hero the Movie, and its approximately 805,000 admissions (thanks, JG!) is actually 107% of Hero’s opening weekend as well. Higher admission figures and lower box office means that the film’s audience is either skewing younger (kids and student discounted tickets) or much of the audience bought discounted advance tickets. Also, it’s worth noting that the audience is 91% female, which is  very surprisingly, even though the gimmick of the film is a young girl loved and adored by 4 handsome rich guys. Anyway, such youth-oriented, idols-driven blockbuster are word-of-mouth-proof, and with the school holidays coming up, it’ll probably hit Hero’s 8 billion yen take, or at least fairly close to it.

One of the many achievements Hana Yori Dango will be remembered for is its ability to unseat Indiana Jones after it only spent one weekend at the top. The adventure film reportedly dropped by 57%, but that’s only because Box Office Mojo based this on the Paramount-reported opening weekend number, which included the sneak previews. In reality, the film only lost about 30% of its audience from the previous weekend if you calculate it with the 847 million yen I reported last week. After two weekends, it has already made over 2.5 billion yen, and will top both The Magic Hour and The Chronicles of Narnia by now already.

The biggest disappointment goes to Stephen Chow, whose CJ7 opened on 190 screens with a 2-day take of only 34 million yen. This is after Kung Fu Hustle opened in 2005 with 307 million yen during the New Years holiday. Also, Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah opens just one place below CJ7, but it also opened on far less screens and features a far less appealing subject.

Elsewhere, The Magic Hour still performing strongly with only 22% less audience for its 4th weekend. Even though Narnia reported only a 33% drop, there were only two people at the Thursday screening I attended last week, and it will struggle to even match half the take of the first film. Kwak Jae-Young’s Cyborg She will drop out of the top 10 by next weekend, and nowhere near the 1 billion yen mark, which must be somewhat of a disappointment for its distributor. But it must have Panasian appeal…right?

- Maybe not, because Kwak’s latest Korean film opened this past weekend all the way down at 8th place. The North Korean refugee-themed Crossing also fail to attract the audiences at 4th place and a not-very-good per-screen average. The Public Enemy Returns also lost its first place throne to Wanted, though it has already acculmulated 2.7 million admission.

More over at Korea Pop Wars.

- It’s Japanese drama ratings time! Many of the remaining Spring 2008 drama wrapped up this past week. The highest-rated final episode was of course Gokusen, which wrapped up its third season with 23.6% rating and a season average of 22.6%. This doesn’t quite reach the heights of the season premiere, which saw a 26.4% rating, and the second season’s 27.8% season average. However, it’s still the highest-rated drama of the season, unless Kimura Takuya’s CHANGE catches up in a major way. However, it’s 7th episode only saw a 20.9 rating, and its 20.9 season average means the final two episodes will have to attract major ratings in order to surpass Gokusen.

Meanwhile, Osen managed to rebound from its season low 9th episode for a 10.1%-rated finale and a season average of 9.1%. Zettai Kareshi ends with a 13.6% rating, which is higher than its premiere episode, and saw a season average of 13.2%. Ryoteki Na Kanojo (My Sassy Girl) wrapped up with just 7.2%, or a little more than half the ratings it got for its premiere, and only second-to-last lowest rated drama on the major networks.

- Meanwhile, Tokyograph has put up their preview for the Summer 2008 Japanese dramas. Much credit to their hard work.

-  Japanese media conglomerate Kadokawa has invested into a Japanese academy that will train professionals for different fields within animation. This is the first time the media company has directly invested into training talent.

- Twitch has a trailer for Kallang Roar, which may be Singapore’s first sports biopic.

- The Japanese best-seller Sono Hi no Mae ni is coming to the big screen. About a woman with terminal illness aimed to live her life to the fullest, it doesn’t sound very interesting, let alone original.

- Johnnie To’s Sparrow continues its global film festivals tour and will head next to open the Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival.

- The Mainichi Daily News has an article about American TV network ABC’s new game show/xenophobic disaster I Survived a Japanese Game Show. The producers actually have the idea half right, until this quote: “In Japan, it’s not like that — it’s shock for shock’s sake. If they feel bad, who cares?” Leave it to the Simpsons to get the idea right: “In America, they reward you for your intelligence. Here, we punish you for your ignorance.”

Oh, and Tokyomango has actually seen the show and says it makes her “want to barf”.

- After its vocalist had to take leave for throat surgery, the Nakanomori Band has annouced that it will split up, with its members going their separate ways.

- Natural City director Min Byung-chun is one of the eight people named by the Korean government to join the KOFIC.