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The Butterfly
Tornado Alley
"You helped me find my ladder"
From birth to death, we all have the need for food in common. Tampopo put a weird twist on the food genre by combining it with a Western, with the emphasis on weird. The film’s main course was the search for the perfect bowl of ramen. The side dishes ran the gamut from heartwarming to sexual food fetishes. When the character in the opening scene breaks the fourth wall, hold onto your popcorn because you are in for a wild ride.
On a dark and stormy night, two truck drivers ride into town looking for a place to eat. Goro wears a cowboy hat and his trusty young sidekick loves ramen so they stop at small shop. Tampopo is a widow with no experience cooking ramen and it showed. Goro and Gun give her advice on her ramen and before long are helping her to improve. Team Ramen begins to expand to include a homeless ob/gyn, a chauffeur, and a drunken contractor. And this is the most normal story in the film.
Just when you think it couldn’t get any weirder, director Itami Juzo says, “Hold my Heineken.” Like tag team wrestling, a passerby will be tagged in and their story of food begins. Professional and international dinner etiquette, con artists, fetishes, first times, and last times all pop in and out with circle wipes. Tampopo delves into the connections we have with food and dining. How much do we savor and pay attention to what we eat? How memories and food are tied together in a family. There were some scenes with the 18+ food fetish couple that I would rather not have seen but for the most part the vignettes were PG, kooky, and entertaining. When the last breaths of a character were for a wild boar intestines recipe you know the director is hard core about food. While I found myself invested in one of the romances, the true love of the film was for food.
Tampopo will not be for everyone, nor will all the stories in it. I enjoyed Team Ramen as they explored the world of ramen, experimenting, failing, improving, and building a comradery. Some of the vignettes were more humorous than others, but overall, I found it quirky and entertaining. As someone who grew up watching westerns with my dad, I fully expected one character to shout out, “Come back Shane!” at the end of the film. If you are in the mood for something different, grab a snack, and settle in for a film dedicated to food in the many ways we celebrate it.
7 February 2024
On a dark and stormy night, two truck drivers ride into town looking for a place to eat. Goro wears a cowboy hat and his trusty young sidekick loves ramen so they stop at small shop. Tampopo is a widow with no experience cooking ramen and it showed. Goro and Gun give her advice on her ramen and before long are helping her to improve. Team Ramen begins to expand to include a homeless ob/gyn, a chauffeur, and a drunken contractor. And this is the most normal story in the film.
Just when you think it couldn’t get any weirder, director Itami Juzo says, “Hold my Heineken.” Like tag team wrestling, a passerby will be tagged in and their story of food begins. Professional and international dinner etiquette, con artists, fetishes, first times, and last times all pop in and out with circle wipes. Tampopo delves into the connections we have with food and dining. How much do we savor and pay attention to what we eat? How memories and food are tied together in a family. There were some scenes with the 18+ food fetish couple that I would rather not have seen but for the most part the vignettes were PG, kooky, and entertaining. When the last breaths of a character were for a wild boar intestines recipe you know the director is hard core about food. While I found myself invested in one of the romances, the true love of the film was for food.
Tampopo will not be for everyone, nor will all the stories in it. I enjoyed Team Ramen as they explored the world of ramen, experimenting, failing, improving, and building a comradery. Some of the vignettes were more humorous than others, but overall, I found it quirky and entertaining. As someone who grew up watching westerns with my dad, I fully expected one character to shout out, “Come back Shane!” at the end of the film. If you are in the mood for something different, grab a snack, and settle in for a film dedicated to food in the many ways we celebrate it.
7 February 2024
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