Plot: A young Takeshi starts working in a strip joint, where he operates the elevator. When he finally gets a break from Fukami (his boss), he confesses that he hasn't any real performance skills. And so Fukami learns Takeshi the basics of comedy and tap dance, two skills he can use to fill in the spots in between the strip acts.
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December 19, 2021
A Takeshi Kitano biography, focusing on his early years. It's more than a little ironic that biographies love to celebrate unique people, whilst the genre itself is probably one of the most generic and predictable around. Asakusa Kid is no exception. It's never good enough to pay true homage to Kitano, for that you're better off watching Kitano's Takeshis'.
Kitano is a unique artist, but Asakusa Kid is primarily focused on telling a story, which just isn't all that interesting. It's a pretty basic rise to fame vehicle that tells you very little about the man behind the artist. The presentation is decent, so are the performances, but it's not exactly riveting cinema, let alone a film that comes close to Kitano's own oeuvre.