Former Japanese game-show host Takeshi “Beat” Kitano wrote, directed and stars in this flawless follow-up to his critically acclaimed Fireworks (Hana Bi).  Fans of Kitano's previous work may be surprised that there are no bloody shoot-outs between cops and Yakuza gang members in this film - Kikujiro is a surprisingly touching yet achingly hysterical story about a kid that spends his summer vacation searching for his mother with the help of a two-bit hoodlum.

Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi, in his screen debut) is a nine-year-old boy that lives with his grandmother (Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Fireworks) but longs to see the mother that he has never known (he is told that she is busy working in another city and that his father is dead).  Armed only with an address and a photograph, Masao plans to make the journey on his own, but ends up being escorted by his neighbor, the lazy, cantankerous Kikujiro Takeda (brilliantly played by Kitano) after his no-nonsense wife (Kayoko Kishimoto) orders him to accompany the boy.

What unfolds is basically a road movie where the two characters learn that they really have more in common than they thought.  At one point, they even buy matching Hawaiian shirts, so you can think of Kikujiro as a cross between Planes, Trains & Automobiles and Twins.  Kikujiro stars out hating the youngster, making Masao stand outside a restaurant while he eats comfortably inside.  Then he blows all of Masao’s money at the track, causing the rest of the journey to be a little “bare-boned.”

There’s a bit of a surprise when the two weary travelers finally arrive at their destination, and Kikujiro spends the rest of the film trying to salvage Masao’s school break.  To say that this is accomplished via two bikers and several comedic skits (complete with makeup and costumes) probably wouldn’t make much sense, so I’m not even going to get into that here.  I will say that Kikujiro has a lot of funny and insulting lines that he gets to hurl at just about everybody in sight. “Joker,” “Baldy,” “Brat,” and “Smart Aleck,” are among his favorites, while the memorable line, “Dummy, you’re no genius,” may have lost something during the translation into English.

Kikujiro is told mainly though flashbacks using Masao’s “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” school project to title the different segments of the film (with uproarious names like “Mister is Crazy,” “It Didn’t Work Out,” and “Mister Fell Down Stairs”).  The film effortlessly floats between slapstick and heart-tugging drama, and if this project was about the Holocaust and had Miramax’s publicity juggernaut behind it, Kitano would probably be a Benigni-esque triple Oscar nominee next spring.

2:02 – for cartoon-like violence and some mild adult language