Hula Garu!

Hula Girls or Hula Garu (said in typical Japanese way with all the stressing and shouting) is your typical tear jerker cum feel good movie.

It tells of a coal mining town, which facing the onslaught of the changing times, finds it self getting relegated to the back seat of history with the advent of the use of oil. What used to be termed as black diamond is slowly being phased out.

So some people in the village come up with a plan to revive the village, by making, of all things, a Hawaiian village.

The story then goes on to record the trials and tribulations that the daughters of the village experience in trying to learn how to be pro dancers (from being called strippers to getting beaten by abusive dads who have lost their jobs) and their teacher who hails from Tokyo.

Unlike a typical feel good movie, where they keep making you feel good before putting you through a big fall, only for it to have a rousing rise in the end, Hula Girls goes up and down in an emotional roller-coaster. It's been a long time since I cried so much in a movie since "Be With Me". But it's a feel good movie in the end, and you know it'll be a happy ending, but that doesn't detract from the way it ended. I did feel good after it.

Major plus point?


Yuu Aoi, who is one of the leads, looks awfully cute!

Next up? 13 Tzameti/ Pathfinder/ For Your Consideration/ Man of the Year.