Yoshito Usui’s Crayon Shin-chan follow the adventures of the precocious and slightly too old for his boots, five-year-old Shinnosuke “Shin” Nohara. A bit of a cult classic back in Japan, 2001’s The Storm Called: The Adult Empire Strikes Back, sees Shin and his friends from the neighbourhood deal with the mysterious disappearance of all the adults in his home town. It would seem that some or other madman is behind the mysterious disappearance and has now returned to take care of the children as well – leading to a madcap adventure as Shin and his little friends attempt to evade the clutches of the brainwashed adults and at the same time, break his parent’s free from this mysterious hold this unknown madman seems to have over them!

As I mentioned above, Crayon Shin-chan is a bit of a cult show in Japan, but unfortunately isn’t one that has particularly caught on in the rest of the world, mostly due to its nature of having most of its humour and puns linked very closely to Japanese parodies, traditions and phrases that simply don’t translate that well and are for the most part quite lost on Western audiences.

That said, this movie certainly did have its funny moments, enough to make me laugh out loud just that once or twice, even if it was the more crude chuckles that got me started!

The movie is absolutely silly fun from start to end, featuring Shin-chan’s distinctive zany art style which has become synonymous with the brand as well as a great little soundtrack that fits the tone of the movie perfectly. All the usual suspects get a great amount of screen time, there are more than a few funny parodies to look out for (though they might have to be explained to you first). The scenarios are all completely over the top, cute and silly all at once and as a movie adaptation, captures the spirit of Crayon Shin-chan perfectly.

It’s not necessarily a movie that I’ll watch again, but for some silly laughs and for something a little different from the norm, delving into the host of Crayon Shin-chan movies really isn’t all that bad a thing!

Eveything (even the parodies) kick off at Expo '70...

There's actually quite a lot of running around in this movie!

Related Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayon_Shin-chan