Illustrator Saori (Mao Inoue) dreams of being a manga artist. Tony (Jonathan Sherr) is an American who’s come to Japan after becoming enamored with the language.
Pure chance brings the two together, and romance is in the air. But…It’s not long before Tony’s quirky questions begin to confound Saori.
‘Why do you say “Do this and do that” and not “Do that and do this”?’
‘And “Out of the blue.” Why is it ‘blue’ that things suddenly come out of?’
Is he like this because he’s a foreigner? or because he’s a language geek?
Will their relationship survive?

This is the plot for 「ダーリンは外国人」 or My darling is a foreigner.

Most Japanese movies come off as B movies for me but their is a few gems. Unfortunately this is not one of those gems. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the movie and it made me laugh at some points. I could really relate with Tony in many situations. There was touching scenes too, in fact the guy is 3 seats down from me was wiping his teary face constantly.

For the most part the Japanese actors were good. Mao Inoue is cute with those big eyes. Sometimes I felt Mao over played her cuteness. Now here’s the problem, the foreign actors were terrible. Jonathan Sherr’s Japanese scene were bad but at times he became to dry. His English scenes were way overacted. Truly I find most foreigners to overact in Asian films. His playboy friend, I wanted to punch. In the scene at the Sushi restaurant were he was talking about how easy Japanese girls are and flirting with all the girls in the room was disgusting. He was really degrading to Japanese women and embarrassing for other foreigners. He should of ended up on the cutting room floor. The only 2 foreigners that were any good were Patrick Harlan (Pakkun) and Dante Carver (Softbank CM), both of which had very few lines. Shinobu Otake and Jun Kunimura were great as Saori’s parents while these unknowns that played Tony’s family were horrendous.

The culture differences shown in this movie were funny and I could relate to. The movie theatre scene when Tony would laugh a couple seconds before everyone else I felt slipped by the Japanese audience but I found it funny and true. All the little differences were funny because they were true. I felt if they pushed more towards the differences and lass towards the love story between the two, this movie would of been a lot better. The scenes in the U.S. were terrible.

Having never read or even heard of the manga, I can’t compare it. However being in an International marriage, I found most to be true to life besides the bad acting. The whole point to this story is very true. International marriage or not has no factor on the relationship. All relationships have problems that can be worked out.

As you can see I’m very mixed feelings about this movie. If you go into this movie expecting the bad acting, it can be a good movie. Except for that moron playboy character, I enjoyed this movie and would go see the sequel.