Poor Abby. She is a typical, or perhaps not so typical depending on your point of view, American girl. She comes and visits Japan with her boyfriend. He leaves for a job, which is much more important to him, she gets stuck at his apartment. He pretty much lets her know that the relationship should end, because he was letting her know all along that she was the one who imposed. Unfortunately for her character in the story, I don't blame him. He's not a good guy, but she should have taken hints a long time ago. So he's gone from the story, and she is left alone.
Drinking one night, she notices a ramen restaurant across the street. Apparently, something 'magical' happens to attract her to this particular place, because when she gets there, a Japanese cat statue beckons her to stay. She could have been drunk. It leads me to believe that if the place across from her would have been a gambling establishment, a meat factory, or a strip bar, she still would have wound up in there and a cried and lamented until she got a job there. Which is exactly what she did. She imposed herself on the owners and wined and moaned, practically forcing him to give her a job. OK, so if she didn't, it wouldn't be called Ramen girl, or even Strip Girl or Meat Girl. It would be 'I'm Getting my Butt on a Plane Back Home Girl'.
Now, to me, after this, is where the story falls apart. They have a language barrier. Somehow Abbey, played by Brittany Murphy, sometimes seems to care very little of the people around her, yet that's not what the story wants you to think of her. None of them bother to get an interpreter. For a long time, we see the owner, played wonderfully by Toshiyuki Nishida, attempting to communicate with her, and she tries to do the same, but each come back with miscommunication, anger, and some sorrow. We are treated with some secondary characters that add little to the importance to the story. Almost none of them know English and if they do, barley help our character.
A romance is thrown in sort of as an after thought. The comedy is sparse and not always funny. It isn't about food, which is sad because they could have had an interesting angle there. The story is implausible and annoying, once again considering the fact that none of the characters bother to help each other much with the biggest problem in the story: COMMUNICATION. The movie is so bad about that, that we don't even know ourselves how much of the dialog the characters understood about each other when they speak.
By the movie's end, I was underwhelmed with other parts of the story that didn't pan out well, like the owner's son. So much potential, so little reward. Still, maybe one day you can catch it on Lifetime, or channel 7984 at 2AM and may actually like parts of it.
Drinking one night, she notices a ramen restaurant across the street. Apparently, something 'magical' happens to attract her to this particular place, because when she gets there, a Japanese cat statue beckons her to stay. She could have been drunk. It leads me to believe that if the place across from her would have been a gambling establishment, a meat factory, or a strip bar, she still would have wound up in there and a cried and lamented until she got a job there. Which is exactly what she did. She imposed herself on the owners and wined and moaned, practically forcing him to give her a job. OK, so if she didn't, it wouldn't be called Ramen girl, or even Strip Girl or Meat Girl. It would be 'I'm Getting my Butt on a Plane Back Home Girl'.
Now, to me, after this, is where the story falls apart. They have a language barrier. Somehow Abbey, played by Brittany Murphy, sometimes seems to care very little of the people around her, yet that's not what the story wants you to think of her. None of them bother to get an interpreter. For a long time, we see the owner, played wonderfully by Toshiyuki Nishida, attempting to communicate with her, and she tries to do the same, but each come back with miscommunication, anger, and some sorrow. We are treated with some secondary characters that add little to the importance to the story. Almost none of them know English and if they do, barley help our character.
A romance is thrown in sort of as an after thought. The comedy is sparse and not always funny. It isn't about food, which is sad because they could have had an interesting angle there. The story is implausible and annoying, once again considering the fact that none of the characters bother to help each other much with the biggest problem in the story: COMMUNICATION. The movie is so bad about that, that we don't even know ourselves how much of the dialog the characters understood about each other when they speak.
By the movie's end, I was underwhelmed with other parts of the story that didn't pan out well, like the owner's son. So much potential, so little reward. Still, maybe one day you can catch it on Lifetime, or channel 7984 at 2AM and may actually like parts of it.