Comedy

My Uncle

ぼくのおじさん

Directed by: Nobuhiro Yamashita
2016 / 110 minutes / Recommended for aged 12+

The adventures of 8-year-old Yukio and his favourite useless uncle.

Primary school student Yukio is faced with writing a class assignment about a family member. After a few false starts, he settles on his uncle, his father’s colourful but freeloading younger brother, who lives with the family.

The uncle, a part-time philosophy lecturer, spends most days lounging on his bed with the family cat, chain smoking, quoting Kant and “thinking”, while secretly reading Yukio’s comic books.

Desperate to get him to leave, Yukio’s mother recruits her no-nonsense sister as a matchmaker, who introduces him to Eri, a beautiful Japanese-American photographer from Hawaii. But Eri returns to Hawaii, setting Yukio and his besotted uncle off on an adventure—taking in Pearl Harbor and a touch of Japanese-American history, a comical chance encounter with the law and a showdown with Eri’s ex-fiancé, with unexpected consequences.

But, don’t leave before the credits finish rolling, there’s more to the story…