Cromartie High: The Movie (Sakigake!! Kuromati Koko) review

I seem to be getting into the habit of reviewing one live-action manga adaptation after another. Either that or Japan is getting into the habit of making one live-action manga adaptation after another. I guess you can’t argue with results though - and with a built-in fan base and lots of source material to draw on script-wise there’s no reason not to keep going back to the well. That may be what director Yudai Yamaguchi was thinking when he set off to make a live-action version of Cromartie High School. Instead of coming up with an entirely unique script specific gags from the manga were strung together loosely and much like the anime once a scene reaches its punch-line it just cuts to a new scene with the same characters in the middle of a completely different scenario whether that be days or months later. This really works out well as there are plenty of good jokes to use and for the most part they did a pretty good job of picking out the stuff that translated well without needing much animated embellishment.

Takamasa Suga stars as Kamiyama, a first year high school student who finds himself stuck at the toughest school in Japan after an unforeseeable miscalculation. It seems he chose Cromartie High because it was the only high school that his dim-witted pal Yamamoto (Tak Sakaguchi) could possibly get into due to the fact that their only requirement is that you know how to subtract. Unfortunately Kamiyama overestimated Yamamoto’s mathematical abilities. Unflappable to the end, Kamiyama makes the best of a bad situation and decides his main goal will be to turn Cromartie High into a reputable school. Of course that’s easier said than done, given the fact that the current student body consists mostly of thugs, morons, and punks (played mostly by actors in their 30s and 40s).

The other students turn out to be a lot more focused on badass accessories and tough guy posturing than actual physical violence though, so the fact that Kamiyama exudes so much confidence in who he is sort of throws them off a bit. In fact he eventually takes on sort of a de facto leadership role amongst his classmates. They just sort of assume he knows what he’s talking about because he’s not as dumb as they are. This becomes a humorous dynamic because he’s so blatantly naïve himself, a fact that provides an endless supply of subtle comedy throughout the movie.

At one point a snobby transfer student named Hokuto (Noburo Kaneko) shows up and has his henchman (Sadayoshi Shimane) inform the class that he’s taking over the school. It’s then that his henchman, who seemingly has no name other than Henchman, notices the class only consists of only one sleeping student. Kamiyama strolls in and assumes Hokuto must be the new teacher, a bizarre mistake considering throughout the entire movie there are no teachers to be seen anywhere. Frustrated by the fact that these students are too dumb to fear him Hokuto starts to rant about his father being the executive of the school. Maeda (Hiroshi Yamamoto) wakes up long enough to inform him that Cromartie High is a municipal school and has no executive. To save face Hokuto makes up some outlandish story about how his father is the shadow Prime Minister of Japan and since he could easily take over Cromartie High Hokuto has come to put an end to his evil plans. Of course Kamiyama completely buys it and together they form “The Global Defense Force” initially consisting of them, Maeda, Hayashida (Mitsuki Koga), a horseback-riding “hard gay” named Freddy (Hiroyuki Watanabe), and a gorilla. Finding evil to fight can sometimes be tricky for a task force in its infancy, so their first plan of action is to clean up the streets by buying up all the drugs in Japan. 7 days later they have a gigantic warehouse full of drugs. Hokuto informs them that they have to get that place empty before his dad finds it so they begin to brainstorm some ways to unload it. Hayashida suggests they sell it to fund their activities but in a moment of boundless generosity Kamiyama decides that they should donate it to the world’s needy children. This is just one absurd gag in a slew of hundreds, but it gives some insight into what you’re in for. Think Blue Spring if it were co-written by Jim Abrahams and David Zucker.

Obviously there isn’t much of a plot to speak of throughout the first half of the movie, but once the second half kicks in you’ll probably wish that theme held true a bit longer. Things inexplicably go off on a primate-obsessed tangent and I have to think all that time could have been much better spent cramming in more funny scenes involving Cromartie students or even some of the students from rival high schools. As it stands the only rival high schooler that gets any sort of screen time is the covertly aspiring comedian Noboru Yamaguchi (Shoichiro Matsumoto), and even then he’s only thrown in as an excuse to show a few scenes with Kenichi Endo stuffed into a Pootan costume. It comes off as an afterthought more than an inside joke for Cromartie fans. Personally I had never even heard of Cromartie High until seeing the movie (I checked out the other stuff later on) and a lot of this went over my head. That doesn’t mean this movie is only for diehard fans though. I thought it was hilarious the first time around not knowing anything about it, and it actually made me interested in checking out the anime later on. If you appreciate stupid humor, you’re able to accept a certain degree of randomness, and don’t expect any sort of a followable story or in-depth character development this is the movie for you. I say that without the least bit of facetiousness or sarcasm because I happen to fit that profile to a T. Cromartie High cracked me up from beginning to end. That reminds me - don’t stop watching when the credits roll because there are a few goofy follow-up scenes that are good for another chuckle or two.

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