Tokyo Tower - Mom, Me and sometimes not very exciting...

I've been trying to catch up on my Japanese cinema...  as much as possible, so I finally found 'Tokyo Tower - Mom, Me and Sometimes Dad' (東京タワー オカンとボクと、時々、オトン) and watched it.

This movie had cleaned up at the last Japanese Academy Awards, winning best film, best director, best screenplay, best actress (and nominated for like 10 more awards):

It retells a popular novel (also turned into a tv series and tv movie), about a guy (played by Odagiri Joe) who moves from a decaying coal mining Kokura town to try to make it in Tokyo in the 60s...   and his relationship with his supportive mother and his deadbeat, estranged father.

I liked the fact that it painted a bleaker, more realistic picture of living in Japan that most non-Japanese people see...   (non-Japanese people think its an unlimited supply of nintendo and pocky sticks... )  --  in actuality its quite hard for young people people to make a living... especially if you're 'non-traditional' (aka a drone in a huge company). 

Eventually things work out and he makes it...

If thats what the movie was about, i would have enjoyed it,  but unfortunately it felt the need to turn the melodrama dial to 'max' and become a story about the mom dying of cancer. 

Hmm...  I guess a movie about a lady dying of cancer is exciting to some... but not to me... :-P

At least the film does a decent job of interjecting some levity into otherwise heavy subject matter... but this diversion ends up coming at the expense of the main story told about the son (his off-beat career, his girlfriend, etc)...  call me shallow, but i'd rather see a movie about that then dying of cancer. :-( I'll give it a 4/10....