Ping Pong (2002)

The "comic book adaptation" may tend to scare people off, but this one at least made a good movie. The story is about a Japanese Ping-Pong league and the different generations of people involved in it, and how they relate to each other and how said relationships change over time.One teenage boy is a devoted serious player, but his friend only views it as a way to kill time. There is also a highly skilled player from China who seeks his fortune in Japan after he had failed at home. There are older competitors, and a onetime former master who now serves as an ad-hoc coach. You also see their superstitions (one player has a habit of hiding in toilet stalls) and how they have no real life outside of Ping-Pong. One player even drops out only to come back because he has nothing else.There are important matches, of course, but the real interest is what happens outside of them.

"Peco" Hoshino is an arrogant young man who's talent for table tennis is matched only by the intensity with which he competes and lives the sport. He shares his passion with friend "Smile" Tsukimoto who, despite being a slightly morbid sort, also demonstrates a real knack for the sport but, to the frustration of his coaches and peers, isn't that fussed about taking it beyond being just a game. As their coach tries to develop Smile's skills as a player, Peco suffers his first major "skunking" at the hands of a Chinese player Kong. Meanwhile the inter-high school championship looms, offering both Peco and Smile a real challenge.Shown recently as part of a night on BBC4 dedicated to the sport of table tennis (who says the BBC don't use the freedom given them by not being reliant on advertising?) I was drawn to this simply because it offered a different sport for a sports movie. The plot does follow a fairly traditional path although it does have plenty of nice touches and directions that make it more than just a genre movie with all the clichés put into ping pong. It isn't as good as I had hoped though because it isn't that consistent across the characters and its depth. This isn't a major failing but it did make it feel a bit bumpy to have weak characters at times while other times some of the dialogue and characterisation was smart and insightful.Visually the film benefits from the use of digital video and feels a lot "realer" than a different film type might have. Sori has some clever shots but even when just watching the games happen it still looks good. The cast are very talented on the table even if some of them are limited in the acting stakes. I liked Kubozuka and his character is the most interesting and he delivers it well. Arata is not as good but his performance is covered by his quiet silent and steady character. Lee, Nakamura and a few others produce solid characters on the table and are also given at least good dialogue scene each to work with – none of them are great actors but they all handle it well. Takenaka and Natsuki were both nice additions in the cast.Overall then this is not a great film but it is quite cool, enjoyable and funny. It doesn't really manage to do any one thing consistently and could have been funnier, sharper, more dramatic or more stylised (or all of them) but it does do all of these things here and there to good effect. Stays away from the easy genre clichés and is different enough to be worth a look though.

Ping Pong is an entertaining variation on the tried and trusted idea of friends who are driven apart, and then reunited by something that they have in common. In this case, it's table tennis. In fact, that's pretty much all there is in this film - the relationship between the two lead characters and.. err .. table tennis.You don't need me to re-iterate the plot, so I won't bother.If this film has a fault it's that it didn't explore the back story of the relationships between the adult characters - it would have been nice to have seen them fleshed out a little more than they were - and that the screenplay would have benefited from some minor expansion in a few areas and a similar reduction in others.However, those are very minor niggles about what is a very well executed film that incorporates some unusual direction and that manages to include quite a few celluloid manga moments. My wife laughed out loud at some of the dialogue, so I can only assume that the Japanese soundtrack is more entertaining than the English subtitles, but I found myself enjoying the film regardless.Oh, and there are some nice location shoots, around Kamakura I think, that show off a small part of the beautiful Japanese coastline.If you get a chance to see this film in the cinema, do so - you won't be disappointed.

the movie is about these two boys who have been friends since they were young. they are both on the ping pong club team. the main character peco is a cocky kid who thinks that he is great, though he is, his best friend "smile" (because he doesnt) is equily as good but doesnt let himself try. the two join a tournament and peco loses to an easy foe while smile beats the only person to ever beat peco... make sense? anyway, the two separate. peco loses his will to play and smile trains harder than ever. they meet again at another tournament where at the end they are put against eachother by elimination. i think that the characters in this movie are pretty interesting. the acting for the most part is fairly good but also a little over the top in a few scenes because of how animated the peco character is. a few things are also pretty far fetched. i would say that it is overall a good movie but you cant take it too seriously or you will be let down.if you like this movie check out aoi haru (blue spring) it is based off of a manga by the same author that wrote ping pong... though much more violent, this movie is a fantastic movie. i would say to also check out kyoki no sakura staring kabozuke yosuke, also much more violent in nature, but a fantastic movie aswell.