What's so great about this film?

well i don't really feel like typing or arguing too much tonight so i won't really cover many of your complaints. however i will agree with you with number 5, the transitions between chapters wasn't all that smooth from what i remember. but i seriously don't understand any of your others points at all. some examples being the two-dimensional characters (really?). and i especially don't understand how it was unrealistic. this movie was all about how people come and go in our lives and inevitably seperate. this is only ONE of the themes of the movie (one of which that everyone can relate to). and cliche? you gotta be kidding me. this movie is alot of things, cliche sure as hell wasn't one of em.

as for everything else, has it occured to you that your on the message board for the movie that your talking about? read a few threads and read other peoples thoughts on it. you'll probably get the insite your looking for.

"Torturous to watch"? A little melodramatic yourself, perhaps? Never mind that...

I myself was pretty impressed in what Shinkai could do with less than 30 minutes here. He strung together a touching if somewhat overdone story (how much *can* you do with love stories anymore?). It isn't intended as philosophy; just simple beauty.

But, "the eye of the beholder", I suppose. I liked it.

How is this movie cliched? Did I see the same movie?

If the movie was cliched, Akari would have been there when the trains passed and they would have reconnected in some form.

What about it is unrealistic? A teenager traveling that far to see a girl? Two teenagers owning scooters? A guy drinking the same beverage every night? A girl surfing?

You list the reasons of why you don't like it, but it would be easier to see where you were coming from if you provided a little more depth or examples to your points.

How old are you?

If you are in teens or even 20s, Please watch it again when you get older in 30's. You might appreciate it more.

Two things.

My brain agrees with your complaints. My heart doesn't.

It's just one of those films that you are not supposed to analyze... the visuals are breathtakingly beautiful, and it revokes childhood memories for some and images of pure but incomplete love for others. That's good enough for me.

And once in a while even the most stone-hearted, intelligent man may find refugee in a cliched tearjerker that's done right...

1. Two-dimensional characters

How so? These characters are beautifully realized, with all their emotions, hopes and dreams both laid out for us to see in the beginning, only for them to largely fall short by the end. We know them by the end of the film, which is the very definition of a three-dimensional character.

2. Lack of depth in storyline

Great films often have truly simple stories, and Japanese filmmakers seem to excel at them. Ikiru comes to mind, as do Grave of the Fireflies and Whisper of the Heart. This film's story is one of those types: remarkably simple, but cutting deep into the soul at its core.

3. Corny script

How so? Give some examples. I don't recall a single moment that I'd label corny.

4. The "seriousness" of the film that comes off as completely pretentious

Again, how so? The film is serious, but not to a ridiculous extent. If it handled its subject matter in a way that made it seem like the plot's goings on affected the fate of the world, then you'd have a point. But no, it deals with things that are very important to its characters, and realistically so. That's not pretension. That's giving proper weight to the story.

5. Lack of coherency/Bad transitions between the three episodes

I had no issue following it. It's episodic, and the episodes are linked by tone and emotion, not plot.

6. Thoroughly unrealistic
The shallowness of your criticism is astonishing. You have to provide examples for this criticism to work. Unrealistic, how? Are the characters unrealistic? The plot? The setting?

7. Done to death/cliched plotline

How so? A movie being about teens in love doesn't make it cliche. If they started out hating each other, went through various hijinks and ended up together at a dance, that would be cliche. But they don't. The relationship of the main characters starts out rooted in deep caring, and that is displayed beautifully in the first part. They're not even together in the last two parts! How on earth is this cliche?

Look, you're entitled to dislike the film. But what you've written isn't film criticism. It's a series of unsupported one-liners that have no bearing to any discussion of this film.

Aren't most films illusions? (except for documentaries). There's nothing new under the sun so every plot you've ever seen has already been done before, just names and circumstances and locations changed around a bit. How many authors steal from each other? How many soundtracks sound like other soundtracks? How many actors remind you of other actors of the same type?

Just because arsalhyder18 didn't care for it doesn't mean it can't seem new and fresh to someone else, even if the plot has been done to death before. Shinkai put his own spin on it and so to that extent he succeeded by following his own vision, whether or not everyone likes the film or not.

I'm sure you think the Beatles had no talent too.