Movie Review: The Ramen Girl

Itadakimasu! Isn't it common in to say this before eating in Japan? Not in this movie. "The Ramen Girl" is an independent film about a stereotypical American girl named Abby who goes to Japan with her boyfriend and is then left stranded there after he decides he doesn't want to put up with her any more. I don't blame him. This chick is annoying. But I digress, after being left all alone in the middle of Tokyo, Abby, in tears, visits a closed ramen shop in hopes of finding someone to rant off to. There she finds a cranky old ramen chief and his wife. They serve her a bowl of ramen to try and make her go away, but it just makes her want to stick around more.

The next day, Abby returns to the ramen shop and sees how happy the ramen makes everyone. Also there's some strange symbolism involving a digitally manipulated cat statue. That part made no sense. But anyway, Abby then decides she wants to learn to make ramen from the shop owner, and she won't take no for an answer. The rest of the movie is student abuse and drama.

Apparently this movie was supposed to be a comedy, but there weren't really too many funny parts. It was mostly drama. And ramen. And cleaning. Lots and lots of cleaning. So yeah, while this movie did manage to keep my interest, that's about all it managed to do. The actor performance was decent from everyone except the female lead. Maybe she was meant to sound like a bumbling idiot who can hardly string together her thoughts into complete sentences, but for the most part the performance just comes off as poor. I did, however, like the badass ramen cheif's performance - even if he was a total dick. I give the Ramen Girl a 5/10.

Oh, also there was a part where eating ramen made them very sad. That was funny.