Tamamono/Lunch Box (2004)

- written February 2008









Written by Tracy Crockett, creator of Unspeakable Magazine

Summary: LUNCHBOX has got to be the weirdest movie I’ve seen yet. The story plays out as a young almost mute woman named Aiko seeks refuge from her pitiful life in the form of sexual fantasies. As a co-worker offers to give her a ride home one night, she agrees after a moment of hesitation. As soon as she’s in the car, the dude asks her for s blowjob. She agrees and offers up an extremely believable job. As she finds, what se sees as love, in another co-worker they do nothing but sit around eat and have sex. Sounds cool right? Well this seems to be too monotonous for the man so he breaks it off. Aiko is a timid little thing so this doesn’t fly to well with her. She doesn’t seem to get the jest of it and continues to keep making him lunch.           Her life seems to crumble from this point, thus leading us into a bizarre turn of events. As stated she has yet to understand that he wants nothing do with her anymore. As he is beginning his new relationship with another hottie from work, they agree to meet up once more, for old times sake. This is something that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. He doesn’t seem to want it to end; yet he does. He soon discovers a whole room full of Styrofoam lunchboxes, thus the name LUNCHBOX. Freaked out he lets her know right then and there that she needs to stop bringing him lunch, it’s over. Oh!! And I forgot to mention that Aiko heeds advice and sanctuary from a slew of talking bowling balls. Yeah that’s what I thought. Talking bowling balls? This is IMO an aspect that sort of ruins the credibility of this film. We’ll see…. Will they reign supreme over her mind?           Overall: LUNCHBOX was a very odd movie to watch. Its eroticism is hard to ignore and actually sets the tone for this movie, which is honestly the only high point of this movie. I feel that Shinji Imaoka ahs a cool story here, but just doesn’t execute it very well. The bowling balls themselves are nothing more than bald heads painted blue. I did, however enjoy the notions set forth of the isolation from the mainstreem. I thought it was believable. Running at only 65 minutes I must say that that was probably a good thing. There’s only so much you can endure and that point is stretching it to the limit. In no means am I saying I didn’t enjoy this movie, because I did. It has enough there to entertain, I just think given more effort and maybe even more money, this could have been way better.           So would I suggest it? Sure…as stated it has its moments and it is only 65 minutes long….

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