Hirokazu Kore-eda can claim to be the greatest living Japanese film director, whose family dramas have marked him out as the heir to Ozu (although in an interview with me he said he preferred to be compared with Mikio Naruse). His work, including the Palme-winning Shoplifters (2018) is rightly revered. But he has always had a sweet tooth for whimsy and sentimentality, which I thought was on display in his much admired baby-swap drama Like Father Like Son (2013).
Now he has given us a sudsy road-movie heartwarmer set in Korea and inspired by the Korean phenomenon of “baby boxes” put out by churches for unwanted newborns. But the movie is fundamentally silly, with tiringly shallow characterisation and broad streaks of crime-drama intrigue, which only underline the fact that not a single word of it is really believable.
