Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Movie review : Summer Wars

Summer wars or Sama Wozu as it is called in Japanese is an animated Sci-fi movie which is essentially serves as a cautionary tale warning us not to lose touch with real world while exploring virtual (online ) world. Technology can be a boon or bane depending on its usage , the movie explores this theme. Made by the same guys who made the lovely "The Girl who leapt through time" , this one also has some neat animation and some impressive sequences of virtual world.

The story begins in Tokyo where two geeks are working as part-time support staff for Óz' the virtual world similar to Second life where users can create avatars and can live just like real world interacting with other users without barriers like language and with much more freedom and choices. In a scenario almost similar to where we are all headed in real world today with facebook and twitter replacing most of the real social interactions , people interact more and more through Óz' even for work. During the summer break , Kenji one of the geekish math wizards who is a little awkward socially is invited by most attractive girl in their school , Natsuki , to take up a summer job at her family house outside city . That summer is her grandmother's 90th birthday. Her grandmother is a powerful figure hailing from a rich and highly regarded dynasty , so a massive celebration is planned and a huge extended family arrive at the palatial house. Setting is similar to most Indian movies ! After arriving at the house Kenji is shocked when Natsuki announces that his job is to play her boy-friend for a week to make her Grandmother happy. The extended family features a lot of lovable and eccentric characters.

Then one fine day , Kenji gets a text message on his phone with what he thinks is a math puzzle . He works the whole night and manages to crack it and to his horror discovers later next day that the puzzle he solved helped someone crack the security code and hack into the virtual world 'Oz' . The person who hacked into Oz uses Kenji's id to carry out attacks and starts stealing many other ids and suddenly the brilliant online virtual world collapses . As the news spreads Kenji is painted as villain and is thrown out of the house and is taken to police station. En-route they realize that the whole city is in chaos as hacker has stolen ids of virtually everyone who matter , the traffic lights are not working , water hydrants go off , emergency services go haywire and almost all essential services are affected and life comes to stand-still in real world.

They return back to the house and Kenji tries to make amends using his math wizardry and almost wrests the control back but is rebuffed at the last minute by the all powerful hacking program. Then the entire family pitches in to support the attempt to strike back at the hacker and restore normalcy to the world. It is a the good old tale of family uniting to save the society , there are a few clichéd plot elements like most of the people who matter in the battle including the good and bad guys all being under the same roof , family disputes / love triangle.

However it was refreshing to see the same old story placed in a 'sci-fi' set-up , being an anime movie helps a lot as animation makes it possible to convey a lot of things which would taken really huge budgets to make in normal movies. In spite of being slightly predictable the movie has its heart in right place and its tough not to like it ! The romance between lead pair blossoms gradually and its also coming of age tale of the youngsters. More than anything it functions as a cautionary tale for todays generation who is getting lost in virtual world and is appeal to also pay attention to real world and family