Your Company
 

I Wish(奇跡)

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Japan · 2011
Rated PG · 2h 7m
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring Koki Maeda, Oshiro Maeda, Nene Otsuka, Joe Odagiri
Genre Drama

Koichi and his brother Ryunosuke have been inseparable their whole lives. Yet, once their parents get divorced, they find themselves on opposite ends of Kyushu. Determined to make things right, Koichi and Ryunosuke devise a magical plan to bring their parents together again.

Stream I Wish

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

70

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

Koreeda's compositions have a sympathetic detachment that Americans rarely value but is, for many Japanese, the whole point of art. That means you can contemplate the wonder in these glowing young faces without feeling as if you're on an intravenous drip of corn syrup.

70

Variety by Dennis Harvey

This tale of two elementary-school brothers plotting to end the physical separation their parents' divorce has forced on them effortlessly pulls off the naturalism and charm desired from material that might have easily curdled into calculated preciousness.

80

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

This wise and funny film, in Japanese with English subtitles, works small miracles in depicting the pivotal moment when kids turn from the wishfulness of childhood into shaping the world for themselves.

60

Time Out by Keith Uhlich

Shots of the kids and their friends running around unfamiliar environments have the fantastical qualities of Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are," minus the forced whimsy.

91

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

I Wish is still amply Kore-eda-esque, full of life, heart, and funny little details about daily existence, as it meanders its way toward moments of real profundity.

Users who liked this film also liked