Ryota Nakano¡¯s heartwarming comic drama ¡°Bring Him Down to a Portable Size¡± deals with the death of an incorrigible scapegrace who lied as easily as he breathed. But its aim, more fully realized than I imagined going in, is sympathy and even celebration.
Based on a nonfiction essay by Riko Murai, the film is the latest by Nakano themed on irretrievable loss, including the hits ¡°Her Love Boils Bathwater¡± (2016) and ¡°The Asadas¡± (2020). And like all his films, beginning with his 2012 feature debut ¡°Capturing Dad,¡± it mixes laughs and tears, a formula perfected by ¡°Tora-san¡± series director Yoji Yamada, to whom Nakano is often compared.
However, while Yamada¡¯s wandering tramp Tora was already a fantastical figure when the series started in 1969, Nakano¡¯s latest is grounded in a real-life sibling relationship, if one viewed through a softening lens, with the harsher moments blurred or elided.
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