Shîsaido môteru (2010) User Reviews

Charming and quirky in that inimitable Japanese way

[alice_frye · 7/10 · 9 January 2011]

The Seaside Motel is trapped in the mountains, without even enough water to serve their guests 24 hours a day, much less having a view of a body of water of any kind.

The plot centers on the misadventures of the occupants of four rooms at the dirty, run down motel over the course of one very eventful night. A cheerful hooker accidentally calls on the wrong room and wins the heart of a young cosmetics salesman. A wealthy married couple, middle aged man and pretty young wife, suffer from his erectile dysfunction and go about solving the problem in the wrong ways. A man deceives his bar hostess date, who happens to be a germ freak, and, finally, a gambler in debt to the Yakuza and his girlfriend, with endless and annoying questions, receive a visit from Yakuza bill collectors.

What the Japanese filmmakers can do better than almost anyone else is give Fate a "last chance" workout a la The Biggest Loser. While not as funny, in my opinion, as Survive Style 5, Seaside Motel manipulates the fates of the various room occupants to collide in similar fashion.

Overall, I found it a fun movie to distract me from other concerns.

Strange Yet Funny at the Same Time

[Uriah43 · 6/10 · 3 March 2013]

This film is about four different couples who end up staying at a cheap motel called the Seaside Motel which is, strangely enough, in the middle of the mountains. In the first scenario a pretty call-girl named "Candi" (Kumiko Aso) accidentally enters the room of a cosmetics salesman named "Masayuki Kameda" (Toma Ikuta). The second scenario involves a married man named "Katsutoshi Ohta" (Arata Furuta) who wants to cheat on his jealous wife, "Misaki Ohta" (Hijiri Kojima) and when she leaves to play some slot machines he calls for a prostitute. But before she leaves she dresses him up to look like a woman so that he won't play around. The third scenario concerns a a member of the Yakuza who owes the mob some money and is hiding out at this motel with his attractive girlfriend name "Rui Ninomiya" (Riko Narumi). The fourth scenario involves a man who finally manages to get a pretty bar girl named "Malin" (Mami Yamasaki) alone in a hotel room. Now, none of these couples know each other but each of them manage to influence the lives of each other in one way or another. For example, in the first scenario Candi was supposed to go to the room of Katsutoshi instead of the room where the cosmetics salesman was staying. At any rate, while each of these stories are quite amusing the resulting mix-ups have severe consequences for all parties. In all cases though it was strange yet funny at the same time. Definitely worth a look.