Weatherwoman

It’s a lewd comedy that gets increasingly bizarre as it continues, taking a single silly concept (what if a weatherwoman flashed her panties at the end of her broadcast?), runs with it and then goes insane with it all. As a comedy, the humour is mostly generated through just how bizarre it all is. It starts as a simple erotically charged farce but it continues to get more and more ridiculous as it continues, the insanity starting to build up for a finale that’s absolutely bizarre in both conception and execution. There’s something strongly, strangely, endearing about the film and its odd determination to be weird and erotic. This is not a movie you can watch with another person in the room (or in audible range), something I feel I need to specify, and it certainly isn’t the sort of DVD you want lying around.

 

Keiko, a sexually aggressive, strong willed young woman, is working as a lowly office lady at a failing television station. One day she fills in for the regular weather girl, Michiko. Keiko spices up her one-time broadcast by flashing her panties, becoming an overnight sensation that causes a massive boost to the TV station’s ratings. Keiko uses her massive popularity to gain power in the station, her report and conduct getting increasingly lewd as the station’s ratings soar and her popularity grows.

Her success causes problems for Michiko, the former weather woman, who finds her position usurped, is forced to appear in an ill-fated and gross show and ends up as Keiko’s maid (or sex slave if you’d prefer, for all the nude, lesbian making out they do). It also reinvigorates the feelings of Yamagishi, a young man in love with Keiko who feels inspired by her aggressive ambition and confidence.

A secret cabal of executives opposed to vulgarity join forces to take down Keiko, doing all they can to sabotage her image and popularity. Led by the powerful, sophisticated and ambitious Kaori, who wishes to destroy Keiko’s career and become the number one weather woman.

 

The movie is full of panty shots, bare breasts, lesbian sex, sex toys, female masturbation and all sorts of other ridiculous in-your-face sexuality. There are a lot of scenes of Keiko masturbating. More than you’d think necessary. Some of the sex stuff goes weird (the guy into ‘new fetishes’ with schoolgirl costumes and giant teddy bears) and some of it gets gross (like the random guy into enemas). Then it goes ridiculous with several BDSM scenes of Keiko getting tied up and whipped (for plot reasons actually – I’m serious, it’s for the story).

Despite all the ridiculous sex stuff, this is a movie with some surprising themes and ideas underneath its slutty exterior. The ideas of image, popularity and public opinion are dealt with, with how absurdly quickly one can rise to instant popularity over something inconsequential and just how fragile and quick to shatter that popularity can be. It’s done as a farce or blatant satire if you’d prefer; Keiko’s rise to power due to her panty shots is sudden and instantaneous, and her rise is shown in a silly little song number. You could call it all a parody.

It’s also all a silly joking jab at the importance of weather woman, here seen as some sort of divine medium of the weather expected to have control over the elements (not joking, this actually happens). There are more than a few jokes aimed at news broadcasts, with the presenters of the news shown as weirdos (particularly at the end when a duo of presenters commentates on a ‘weather battle’ between Keiko and Kaori).

 

More than that is the idea of powerful women. Under all the masturbating, lesbian sex and panty shots, this is a movie about strong-willed, ambitious women seizing power. Both Keiko and her nemesis Kaori seize and battle for power in both the TV station’s hierarchy and in public popularity. Keiko is strong willed and aggressive, with a determination that sees her forge ahead, unafraid of any consequences. She does falter once, when the story calls for it, which does feel out of place for such a headstrong character, but it isn’t long before she takes charge again in ridiculous, sexually fuelled flamboyance. Kaori is similar, though a little more uppity (she went to Paris, which apparently makes her ‘sophisticated’ as she keeps saying) and has no issues with using people to get her way.

Other characters are played mostly straight. Michiko is a somewhat tragic figure in that her career is all but destroyed by Keiko and Kaori’s rises to power, but it’s a little hard to properly sympathise with her once she’s nude and soaped up. Yamagishi feels like an odd outlier, existing to mostly be in awe of Keiko. The other cast are mostly nameless and there for random jokes (Michiko’s fetish obsessed boyfriend stands out, or the TV station head who just likes seeing panties).

It’s absolutely bizarre. A whole bunch of scenes feature baguettes for some baffling reason. There’ll either be a random character holding a baguette, or will have one just there in the scene somewhere and I have no idea why. The random song numbers are strange, but not as bizarre as the ‘weather report as a variety show event’ finale cooked up by ‘sophisticated’ Kaori. The insanity reaches its climax at the finale, where Kaori and Keiko, dressed in ridiculous costumes, have a ‘weather battle’, where the duo fight by controlling the elements, causing rainstorms, autumn winds and lighting strikes against each other.

 

Weatherwoman is a thoroughly strange, bizarrely entertaining movie all things considered with a thick vein of erotic nonsense. The nudity and sex isn’t used as flavouring, it’s in the meat of the movie, which just makes it all the stranger. It’s a strangely watchable movie, the sort where you become hooked in wanting to see how much weirder, cruder and ridiculous it can get – which, as it turns out, is a lot.