Let’s Go Karaoke! (Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme 2025)

Last year, the man who invented the earliest prototype of the karaoke machine passed away. Shigeichi Negishi never patented his Sparko Box, content instead to feel “a lot of pride in seeing his idea evolve into a culture of having fun through song around the world.” And certainly, karaoke’s joy of singing to a backing track, usually while blitzed with your mates, has spread to all corners of the globe. But its heart will always be in Japan. 

If you’ve seen enough Japanese media from the 80s onwards, doubtless you’ll have seen a character or two stand up and sway to a ballad or scream to a metal song. The delightful Aggretsuko is a recent example of this, and no doubt Let’s Go Karaoke! hopes for a similarly heartwarming reception. Based on a manga of the same name, Let’s Go Karaoke! tells of the unlikely friendship between a mid-level yakuza lieutenant, Kyouji Narita, and the head of a junior high school choir, Satomi Oka. How did such an unlikely pairing occur? Because Narita needs to get better at karaoke for the annual competition his boss puts on, otherwise he’ll get a humiliating tattoo. As you do…

An absurd premise, absolutely. But it’s the sort of premise Nobuhiro Yamashita was born to direct, considering his most famous film in the West is the sprightly Linda Linda Linda, that tale of high school girls learning punk-pop for a high school concert. But the sparky energy that gave his earlier work some appeal (even if it didn’t make up for the lacklustre pacing) is disappointingly absent here. Let’s Go Karaoke! is devoid of any visual panache, Yamashita favouring bland panning shots and a shallow depth of focus that makes the film resemble mid-2010s television. It gives the film a sedentary aesthetic that, combined with an hour and forty minutes plus running time, made this reviewer check out long before the credits rolled. 

Material this zany requires a far more energetic filmic approach, but it’s hard not to feel like Yamashita just doesn’t care. Maybe this lack of spark is due to his admirable work ethic. Yamashita has no fewer than four feature-length credits to his name in 2024, including the sparse mountain chiller Confession and the delightful-looking animation Ghost Cat Anzu. Something was always going to come off the worse in that crush of projects, and I’m willing to bet that Let’s Go Karaoke! was the unlucky one of the bunch. 

What does elevate the film a little, however, is the lovely performances from Go Ayano and Jun Saitō. Ayano has the flashier of the two performances as the flamboyant yakuza cruising around town in a neat suit and a Toyota Century, but Saitō plays a great straight man (teen?) to this larger-than-life figure. With his borderline bowl cut and large glasses, Saitō appears every inch the timid nerd, all too eager to sob at the mere suggestion of being close to a yakuza. But instead, he plays it with an unimpressed, impassive gaze and is very willing to give hardened criminals some tough love when it comes to their lacklustre singing ability. There’s a whiff of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun in the comedy of a kid in a uniform bossing around a bunch of adults, albeit with less gangland warfare and more deadpan comedy. 

You do genuinely believe that they’re fond of each other under those mismatched personalities and ages, though one wonders whether the police would have been called had Satomi’s mother and grandfather had gotten wind of what the kid was doing instead of attending choir practice. But even that quite affecting chemistry, Yamashita’s film is too safe and too slapdash to ever hit the high notes the premise promises. A real pity. 

A final brief word about how I got to see this: The Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme has been curating a yearly series of contemporary and classic Japanese cinema across the UK since 2004, showcasing a wide range of titles that would otherwise never see a cinema screen over here. This year sees screenings in London, Lewes, Cardiff and Colchester to name four locations and has a diverse lineup of films, including the first Japanese film in full colour, Carmen Comes Home, and Yamashita’s aforementioned Ghost Cat animation. Check out their website for what promises to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to catch Japanese rarities on the big screen.

Ethan’s Archive – Let’s Go Karaoke