Let the opening music be a warning, a mixture of traditional japanese flute played on a $20 casio while a jazz song plays at the same time. This film is wrong from start to finish. I love asian films, this was one of the worst ever. Might make a funny Mystery Science 3000 film though.

Science fiction and a nice story that is very different.

I happen to like the Princess Kaguya fairy tale, so I was eager to see a Japanese live action film based off it. The acting was very well done, I particularly like Ayako Wakao (the Mother) acting. The change in the father's attitude over the course of the film was a bit choppy, but over all still very touching. I liked all the costumes and sets. (A nice detail was how the house the family moved into actually *looked* new, while all the other homes were older looking.)The twist at the end actually took me by surprise. (I'm assuming people reading this actually KNOW about the fairy tale, so I'm not giving anything away.) They turned a classic Japanese folk tale into a science fiction movie! The space ship design was really well done, though in a non-American SciFi typical spaceship design kind of way. ;)You will laugh at the song they played during the credits. Talk about coming out of left field! It doesn't match the rest of the movie at all and I am left scratching my head in confusion on why they thought that was a good choice.