My wife bought this book during our vacation. She read it and liked it a lot. I read it later, really liked it too and went on to check if it had perhaps been turned into an anime already. But it hadn't. Instead, I discovered this live action film which we decided to watch together.
And let me tell you: watching it soon after reading the book isn't such a good idea. My expectations were let down, and my wife didn't even watch the movie to the end.
Let's start with the most obvious: in order to fit the story into the screen time, it had to be shortened. One of the big arcs in the book, as well as some minor scenes, just didn't make it into this film.
But more importantly, I found the storytelling just plain awkward: the main character meets his friends and they reminisce their past, but the way these past memories were brought up just didn't seem natural. Actually, most of the acting just seemed like... acting. As in, in theater. Maybe that's typical for Japanese live action films (this must have been the first one I watched, so I have nothing to compare it to), but I just couldn't buy the act, it was too theatrical. Like watching a school play or something.
Also, I just have to mention the cat, who's undoubtedly one of the two main characters in this story. I read that they actually trained a real cat for this film, and it's amazing, but I'm not sure that it was a good choice. in the end her (his?) inner dialog just didn't seem to match the acting. For example, there's a scene where Nana is supposed to be desperately trying to get out of a carrier box. The inner dialog sounded desperate. But the cat on the screen? Not so much: she just sniffed around, no sign of the stress or desperation she was supposedly going through.
All in all, while I really loved the original story, I don't believe this film is the best screen adaptation there could be. I still hope to see it adapted into an anime (mini)series one day.
