Well here’s a bizarre little mess. I’m just going to call the film “Fireworks” because “Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or The Bottom?” is possibly the very worst title I’ve ever heard … and I still make fun of Benji the Hunted and Smilla’s Sense of Snow.
On the day of the Fireworks celebration in the coastal village of Moshimo, thirteen-year-old Nazuna (voice of Suzu Hirose) finds a magic marble in the sea. She doesn’t know it yet, but the marble grants “What if” type wishes to people incapable of reasoning past Step One. Naturally, such will come in handy when Nazuna decides to run away while employing the help of Norimichi (Masaki Suda), the least offensive of five horndog classmates.
Before I get further into plot minutiae, I have to explain something:
Fireworks has a translation problem the size of your average fireworks show. Even if the title were reasonable, the film would still have a huge problem. Start with the focus on five boys who pass the time sexually harassing their relatively buxom teacher; does this play well in Japan? Because it sure doesn’t in the United States these days. I’d call it an error or something lost in translation, but the camera often finds weirdly voyeuristic angles to display the underage heroine, Nazuna. Then, of course, are the words themselves. For instance, “dropping the kids at the pool” is not an idiom you want to get wrong, which the movie does.
Nazuna insists she “isn’t running away from home,” she is “eloping.” Yet, her “elopement” seems fairly indifferent to the prospect of marriage or partnership. Again, maybe this is just a mistake of age; maybe Nazuna doesn’t quite get the full meaning of elope. But then we’re back to the boys; when they’re not deliberately embarrassing their teacher, they’re arguing over whether fireworks are “flat or round.” It took several conversations for me to understand what they meant … what they intended to argue is whether the detritus from an exploded firework is co-planar or spherical. (It is spherical, of course, but one can see how a tween could be confused.)
The “flat v. round” argument becomes the basis for the entire plot. The boys decide they need to find a proper vantage point to discern with objectivity and their Stand by Me-like quest drives the action for 2/3rds of the film. So maybe you can agree with me that getting the words “flat” and “round” slightly more specific was kind of an important thing to do. Perhaps the words “co-planar” and “spherical” wouldn’t fit the age group, but “2-dimensional” v. “3-dimensional” would have driven the point home with much less confusion.
After that, the film becomes a series of scenario replays – Nazuna can’t escape her ogre-ish parents, but when she throws the marble and says the magic words, the scenario changes; there is some question as to whether the change is real or just a dream sequence; there is 
also significant question over what forces drives the magic? Is the magic power indifferent to the changes created? Why let the magic happen if the outcome isn’t necessarily improved, nor a lesson learned? Is this just a teen Japanese take on Sliding Doors? Is there some sort of understanding that the details may change, but the big picture doesn’t?
The animation in Fireworks varies between blasé and brilliant; the impression I get is the head animator phoned in the routine, but went all out for a challenge, kinda like Hilary Swank’s acting. In a film that’s all over the map, this style makes sense. I can’t possibly recommend Fireworks, of course, but the film does have sporadic merit.
♪ Do you ever feel you don’t get a film
Staring at the screen
Wishing to start again
Do you ever feel someone should be employed
To translate amply
Keep heads from caving in
Do you ever want a movie buried deep
Six feet under ground
Cause it’s a cine-sin
Do you know that there’s still a chance this bunk
Can lift above “stunk”
You just gotta rewrite the trite
And make it right
Just change the plight
On QC don’t rely
Cause baby this is Fireworks
Should We See It from the Side or The Bottom?
Oh no no
Shoot that title in the eye eye eye♫
Unrated, 90 Minutes
Director: Akiyuki Shimbô, Nobuyuki Takeuchi
Writer: Shunji Iwai, Hitoshi Ône
Genre: What if … ?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Japanese animation
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Linguists
♪ Parody Inspired by “Firework”
