The Door Into Summer (夏への扉 キミのいる未来へ) (2021)

Robert A Heinlein's 1956 science fiction novel is turned here into an unhurried Japanese 'heartful' drama mixed with madcapped and madly paced science fiction of a distinctly "Back To The Future" kind (replete with a mad professor in a white coat screaming about there being no time to lose to a bewildered kid in a orange/red puffer jacket) but the two elements - sloooow heartful drama and zany science fiction -  do not sit well together, plus the sight of the pretty-J-boy hero turning to booze, swigging from a flask, or the cat-hating J-femme fatale "letting go" and becoming a hideous Jabba the Hut draws unintended laughs, detracting from the scifi adventure.

★★☆☆☆

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Kidnapped (2021)

Nothing to do with Robert Louis Stevenson, he'd be in a hurry to tell you, this mindless mystery fare, like an especially poorly plotted episode of Murder, She Wrote, has an American couple running around a small Australian island resort called Koala Sanctuary looking for their daughter missing from hotel childcare, but who among the wooden Australian extras would want to kidnap the girl and for what possible motive you will know immediately as the story, like a Days Of Our Lives subplot given more credence than it is due plays out in soapy, bleedingly obvious fashion.

★★☆☆☆

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