The Uchōten Hotel
7.4 /10 1 Votes7.4
Director Koki Mitani Music director Yusuke Honma Duration Country Japan | 7.2/10 Genre Comedy, Drama, Romance Screenplay Koki Mitani Writer Koki Mitani | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 2006 Cast Kōji Yakusho (Heikichi Shindo), (Hana Takemoto), Koichi Sato (Katsutoshi Mutôda), (Kenji Tadano), Ryoko Shinohara (Yôko the Call Girl), (Tokiko Yabe)Similar movies The Apartment , Sunset Boulevard , Two Night Stand , Sex and the City , Peter\'s Friends , 200 Cigarettes |
The Uchōten Hotel (THE 有頂天ホテル, THE Uchōten Hoteru) (also known as Suite Dreams and Wow-Choten Hotel) is a 2006 comedy film written and directed by Japanese director Kōki Mitani. The film is set in a five star Tokyo hotel on New Year's Eve, and follows the misadventures of various hotel staff and guests in the run-up to midnight.
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The film is reminiscent of the Hollywood screwball comedies of the 1930s and 1940s, and explicitly references the 1932 film Grand Hotel, whose plot also followed the interlinked lives of various characters in a fictional hotel over a short period.
Cast members include: Koji Yakusho (Heikichi Shindo, the hotel accommodation manager), Takako Matsu (Hana Takemoto, the chamber-maid with a case of mistaken identity), Kōichi Satō (Katsutoshi Mutōda, the disgraced politician), Shingo Katori (Kenji Tadano, the bell boy with musical aspirations), Ryoko Shinohara (Yōko, the call girl), Keiko Toda (Tokiko Yabe, the deputy accommodation manager), Katsuhisa Namase (Takashi Seo), Kumiko Aso (Naomi Ohara), YOU (Cherry Sakura) and Toshiyuki Nishida (Zenbu Tokugawa, the aging enka star).
The film was nominated for 11 Japanese Academy Awards, but did not win in any of the categories.
Plot
The plot involves numerous characters, the different problems or situations they face in the run-up to midnight, and the ways that these different storylines interact and are resolved. The various storylines include:
Reception
The film was the third highest-grossing domestic film at the Japanese box office in 2006 and, as of January 5, 2015, is the 93rd highest-grossing film in Japan, with ¥6.08 billion.