Sebastian (Eugene Kim) is an angry and cynical wannabe YouTube star who runs his own channel called F.O.B. Motherfucker where he breaks down Asian stereotypes and explains why they’re so inaccurate. After recently being dumped by his girlfriend, he ends up moving in with his father but shortly after the move, his cousin Naoto (Gaku Hamada), a quiet sake maker on vacation, arrives from Japan with one goal, to find his ex girlfriend and only love from Japan, Olivia, and to find out why she left the country to begin with. After a stern talk from his father, Sebastian reluctantly becomes Naoto’s driver and travel companion as the two take a road trip to northern California to track down Olivia.
Directed by Junya Sakino, Sake-Bomb takes an interesting approach to the culture clashing genre where instead of “technically” vastly different cultures colliding, we have a Japanese native crashing into the world of a Japanese American’s life. One would expect some sort of bond to exist between the two family members but Sebastian is a loud, obnoxious and unreasonable American asshole that doesn’t make things easy for anyone, least of all his cousin. It’s because of this, along with his selfish motivation to try and win his girlfriend back, that leads to all the problems he and Naoto encounter on their quest to find Olivia.
The one brilliant part of Sake-Bomb was that due to the clashes of culture, there was also a clash of humor. In the film we get a nice blend of dry Japanese humor with the in-your-face, loud and animated American humor that gives each actor a chance to shine in the comedic spotlight (one more than the other) while also giving audiences an opportunity to clearly see the differences in humor between the two cultures. It was great seeing Gaku Hamada succeed in English since his Japanese comedies like Robo G are also very entertaining,
Eugene Kim delivered his dialogue perfectly but I found his overall performance to be just a little too over the top. Basically, he was an overacted asshole whose level of douchbagery/blatant honesty got pretty annoying after a while. Though it became difficult to believe that he even believed half of the bullshit that spilled out of his mouth, I will give him credit for his delivery when it came to breaking down stereotypes and trying to find the reasons as to why they exist.
His character, Seabastian, is a ridiculous character to begin with but to top it all off, he sweats a lot from his face when he gets angry or gets involved in a heated discussion which is pretty funny. What’s annoying is that he’s an angry asshole and not the funny type of angry asshole, which is really unfortunate. He’s an intelligent angry asshole that makes a lot of valid points that are expressed in such a way that almost nobody wants anything to do with him (which makes sense). Kim really had only one scene involving the impersonation of a J
apanese tourist that had me howling with laughter, but other than that he didn’t do much except for blatantly pointing out stereotype issues.
Gaku Hamada is the real star of the film and always steals the spotlight and while a lot of the supporting characters look like serious amateurs next to him, his humble character in the film prevents you from hating on them throughout. While the story seems like it’s about Naoto’s journey, it’s really about Sebastian learning to give people a chance, to figure out why he’s angry all the time, and to basically take notes from his awesome sake brewing cousin.
I was pretty excited to watch Sake-Bomb but by the time the film was over I came to the realization that there were a lot of missed opportunities for some great comedy. Culture clashes are a gold mine for humor and there were only two truly laugh-out-loud moments and a couple of giggles sprinkled throughout. Junya Sakino was on the right track but Jeff Mizushima’s script had an emphasis on drama as well which is what eventually led to the partial downfall of the film, creating a Japanese-American dramedy instead of a comedy. The title even sounds like a comedy and if they went completely that route I think the entire Sake-Bomb cast and crew would have had a nice sleeper hit on their hands.
Rating: A few good laughs but this Japanese culture clash misses one too many comedic opportunities (5.5/10)
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