Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

The movie features a weak story-line but is quite unique in a way (desert humor and lazy screenplay). Something like the fact that music can bring people together, here the director displays that food can also bond people in a similar way. I did watch the movie having dinner which I recommend the viewers to do so. I've never been to Japan or known much about their food habits and so the 'rice balls' (which is mentioned as the soul-food in the movie) reminded me of the rice-balls I did have when I was young. Its made in southern part of India (mothers make a similar kind of rice-ball with fish/ vegetables inside and give it to kids except they don't cook after making one). The actors did a fine job. The acting of the Finnish boy was below average and was good the director didn't show him up close. Apart from these positives, the movie lacks logic. The events are pretty unreal and no money issue is dealt throughout and good characters throughout (something like a cartoon, everybody is nice to the other) that is not practical. The bottom line is that I liked the movie irrespective of its lack in logic for the director served it with the magic word "KOPI LUWAK".

Like the items from the menu of its titular establishment, "Kamome Diner" may be deceptively simple, yet within it is an amusing and sometimes hilarious contemplation on living in a foreign land, accompanied by droll performances and oozing sincerity so keen to please it would be churlish to fully dismiss. Naoki Ogigami's travelogue-slash-food show revels so much in its simplicity and oddity it's to the writer-director's credit that she succeeds on pulling it off with a material that sometimes border on sheer kink.Sachie (Satomi Kobayashi) solely runs Kamome Diner (Ruokala Lokki), a restaurant in Helsinki she envisions catering to Finns looking for other than the typical Japanese fare -- a dream that, judging from the perpetually empty tables and chairs, is getting a cruel disappointment. Never getting more than curious stares from passersby, wheels of change start turning soon, however, with Sachie's first customer, an apparent Japanophile (Jarkko Niemi) whose eagerness to start up a small talk with her paves the way to meeting with Midori (Hairi Katagiri), a Japanese woman who is in Finland, as she explains in one of the film's most comical moments, by blind luck. Midori strikes a friendship with Sachie and helps in maintaining the diner, which gradually sees patrons trickle in even as Sachie develops a bond with some of the restaurant's customers.Essentially a dissertation on the Maslowian hierarchy, Ogigami incrementally surrounds her characters with the core components for the survival of man (or woman, for that matter) by having them realize first the significance of basic necessities (the need to earn, the need for lodging, the need to find a lost luggage, etc) before they learn the value of peripheral essentials such as the camaraderie among themselves and the eventual self-actualization of Sachie as a restaurateur. The warm cinematography by Tuomo Virtanen lends a homey feel to the quaint diner -- a rather cramped but cozy place in the otherwise large but damp Finnish capital -- that furthers the empathetic kinship within its walls, a pleasing, if not perfect, marriage of the hospitable Japanese and the laid back Finn.

I found the film a bit boring and to tell the truth, fell asleep watching it on DVD a lazy Sunday afternoon.I found the acting especially by the young Finnish guy and the middle-aged Finnish woman less than convincing. Especially the "Koskenkorva" episode was a bit unrealistic, why would a woman who is depressed after losing her lover (or whatever the reason was) step into an empty diner, which doesn't at all look like it would even serve alcohol, and ask for a drink of vodka?But anyway, I just wanted to point out the careful selection of older and newer Finnish design classics used in the film. Aalto tables and chairs in the diner, the interiors of the Aalto-designed Academic Bookstore, Antti Nurmesniemi's coffee pots, the Hackman Tools series of pots and pans, Moomin books, and of course Marimekko clothes. Just to mention those I recognized before falling asleep.

I simply can't understand for what this must have format of a film, which always reminds us of such great people, as Akira Kurosawa,Felini,Tarkovsky. Even if this film was intended to be a simple commercial film, then it's even worse because of the following reasons.This film's plot is very, very loose(if it can be called "plot"). An woman about 30 to 35, opened a Japanese restaurant in Helshinki,at first without anybody's help,keeps it for a few months without getting any customer. Who is she? Where she got that sum of money without which such an ineffective business can't be continued for such a long time. We can't know it throughout the movie,because no one of the authors of the film--the author of the original story,the director and scriptwriter didn't cared about such "little things".Then suddenly appears a young fin, who's very interested in Japanese anime(again we can't know who he is,how his interest in Japanese anime has begun). He asks the restaurant owner the words of an anime song. But why? Does this detail have any relation to the development of the story or main theme(if it exists at all)? No,not at all. It may be replaced by anything--some part of a Japanese poem or words of any traditional or popular songs. So there's no reason for including this song into their conversations of 5-10 minutes duration .Then suddenly appears an middle-aged Japanese woman,who chose Finland for destination of her travel by incredibly random way(spinning a globe and pointing by a fingertip). But why? Authors don't try to even suggest her motive. All events in this film are motiveless or,in rare exceptional cases, with very poor and banal motives. This catastrophic script by a director herself wasn't compensated by directing, because the direction also pointless and without any aesthetic principles.How some Japanese people could see such an empty thing and say,"it's good"? You know, this is not a film, not even a story for literature. It is a poor example of how shots can be edited so that they seemed to represent a one lineal time-space. I as a Japanese clearly know who is really to be blamed. Half-educated television producers who never have respected film history and film art for these 15 years!