Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

If Hayao Miyazaki made a cyberthriller, the result might be something like "Summer Wars." This colorful little anime movie spends most of its run straddling the line between a family reunion comedy and a world war entirely on the web. And the results manage to stir your heart and make you laugh at the same time. Math nerd Kenji is shocked when popular upperclassman Natsuki asks him to come to her family's country house for the weekend. Unfortunately, he's there under false pretenses -- not only is Natsuki claiming that he's her boyfriend, but that he's a wealthy college student at Tokyo U. Yeah, that is inevitably going to backfire. But something far worse happens when OZ (a crazy hybrid of amazon.com, Facebook, fighting video games and... well, just about everything you can find on the WWW) is hacked -- and Kenji is the main suspect. The truth is actually much more sinister -- a horrendous program called Love Machine is devouring OZ user avatars, and is using the computer connections to cause chaos all across the world. When tragedy strikes the family, Kenji inspires them to fight back against Love Machine. But can the family's plan stop the program before it has a chance to take revenge on them? "Summer Wars" isn't really like any other movie I've ever seen -- it's part cyberthriller, part bittersweet family story, part crazy comedy, and part colorful anime. It starts off as a simple family dramedy, with Kenji getting thrown into Natsuki's eccentric family and dealing with all the baggage they bring with them. Plus, you know he's going to get busted. But when Love Machine appears, the stakes are suddenly the technological safety of the ENTIRE WORLD. So we get a wild, crazy guerilla cyberwarefare (involving a boat, a giant computer, an army truck and lots of ice!) as the family (plus Kenji) unites to battle Love Machine. At the same time, the writer maintains the focus on the eccentric family, their grudges, and their unique personalities. Plus, the animation for this movie is SPELLBINDING. The "real world" stuff is rendered in traditional hand-drawn anime, but the scenes set in OZ are brilliant, surreal, colorful and dreamlike. Whole civilizations on shelves, crowned whales, floating islands, stacked sports stadia, and endless chambers filled with strange little creatures. And all the characters are very well-fleshed-out. Kenji is a nice, rather socially inept guy with epic math skills, and Natsuki is a strong young girl who finds herself with the weight of the ENTIRE PLANET on her shoulders. The entire cast is well-developed -- from the stately grandmother to the idiot cousin who doesn't know what's going on -- but one of the best is Kazuma, a 13-year-old kung-fu expert/computer nerd. "Summer Wars" may start small, but it quickly grows to the epic size of the World Wide Web itself. Even better: it's funny, heartwarming and all-around engrossing.