Jmovie review: My Darling is a Foreigner

Title: My Darling is a Foreigner Release date: 4/10/10 Genre: Slice of Life Cast: Inoue Mao, Jonathan Sherr Plot: Saori (Inoue) strives to be a manga artist. She has fallen in love with an American man, Tony (Sherr). This is the story of their relationship. What is good: Inoue Mao is still adorable. What is bad: There isn't a lot of substance. Letter rating: C

I was really looking forward to seeing this movie. I love Inoue Mao and I thought the plot seemed cute. Unfortunately, at the end, I realized that there wasn't a whole lot there. What the movie claims as cultural differences are sometimes just the differences between men and women. At one point, Saori laments that she does all of the housework while Tony does nothing. So, being the nice man that he is, Tony starts washing the dishes and doing the laundry. However, he doesn't really know how to do these things properly. Instead of taking him aside to show him how to do the chores, she just kinda grumbles through it. I don't see this is a cultural difference. I think men all over the world don't know how to wash dishes.

As a matter of fact, there are only a few cultural differences shown. When Saori introduces Tony to her family at her sister's wedding, Tony doesn't understand how the family communicates. The parents jokingly put down their children but Tony doesn't get the joke. It isn't until the end of the movie that he understands her family dynamic.

Despite wanting to enjoy the movie, I found it somewhat boring. It's basically the story of their day-to-day life. If you have nothing better to do, it's not an awful movie to sit through. At least there's the adorable Inoue Mao to save it!