I worry that the exuberant NYAFF programming description of Boys On the Run might oversell the kind of comedy the movie contains. Going in I think I was expecting a raucous sex comedy but but this movie is playing a different game. It's more of a laughing quietly or uncomfortably film as opposed to a laugh-out-loud experience, but I think that's actually to the movie's benefit.
Ostensibly a romantic comedy, Boys is about Toshiyuki, a sexually frustrated salesman of vending machine toys who's just hit 29 and has no real prospects. He still lives at home, his company's second-rate, and he's generally boxed himself into a socially awkward hole that would probably have led to random stabbings or suicide (or both) if the pretty but slippery Chiharu hadn't entered his life. He doesn't know how to read her, but it seems like she might really be into him, even after a mishap with a porn video and another at a love hotel.
Then the complications arise. Toshi (almost) does something he shouldn't with someone who knows better and before you know it boy has lost girl and spends the rest of the movie trying to get her back. But I'm not sure that's actually what the movie is about. One of the successes of Boys on the Run is that it moves in strange ways that nonetheless follows its characters in ways which make sense even if we don't always like the motivations or outcomes.
It's based on the manga of the same name by Kengo Hanezawa - I find myself wanting to read it to see how he handled the characters. Toshi isn't precisely likeable - in fact, he's kind of unpleasant. But there's something about him, his doggedness and weird sincerity that make you want to pull for him. As played by Kazenobu Mineta (The Shonen Merickensack, Oh My Buddha), Toshi is trapped in the lifestyle of an oversexualized man-child. Chiharu is the first thing he really "wants" and it motivates him to get outside of his comfort area. Unfortunately, as man-children are wont to do he effectively into extremes hoping to win her over.
Contrast him with the handsome and confident Aoyama (Ryuhei Matsuda) who gradually becomes Toshi's professional and romantic rival. He's everything that Toshi's not but it doesn't make him any less of a heel. The two of them have a showoff in the final act that goes about how you'd expect given the kind of man Toshi has been all along.
Let's consider the object of Toshi's affections, Chiharu: she's hard to pin down through much of the movie. We get a picture of her from Toshi's point-of-view. Later in the film we hear some things about her that maybe change what we think about her as a person. Maybe she's not likable in the way that we thought she was. I kind of respect that the movie is unafraid to make so many of the characters ugly in ways both small and large.
If I've described the movie a lot it's because Boys on the Run is hard to pin down - to me this actually elevates the film. It works as a comedy, yes, but it works better still as a very particular focus on a very specific character. You may not get a lot of big laughs out of it but its value lies in trying to go somewhere different with its common ingredients.
Charles is a freelance writer and game designer. Check out his blog, Monster In Your Veins.