Japanese comics have been doing mockumentary skits on TV for years, but Japanese filmmakers have been slow to produce mockumentary features. Now, in Ski Jump Pairs -The Road To Torino we finally have a Japanese answer to This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumentary masterpiece about a failing heavy metal band. The film began life as former salaryman Mashima Richiro’s graduation project at the Digital Hollywood school for future CG artists and technicians. As a CG short, it was screened at more than 40 film festivals and contests around the world, winning numerous prizes. It was then expanded into a feature, with Kobayashi Masaki directing the live-action portions.
It begins as a send-up of a sober-sided NHK documentary about a heroic underdog’s struggle to victory. A dulcet-toned presenter (Tanihara Shosuke, who does this sort of thing in real life) tells us about the research of one Professor Harada, a specialist in quantum physics. Ten years earlier he discovered an unusual phenomenon: Subjected to the right conditions, objects in flight would divide, such as one rat in a wind tunnel inexplicably becoming two.
As seen in “archival” footage, Harada is a stereotype of the seedy, socially inept academic, but he is also fanatically dedicated to proving his theory of “inflight division.” Strapping his own two young sons to a single pair of skis, he sends them barreling down a playground slide and - let’s just say they survive, but barely. This experiment gives the professor yet another brilliant idea - for the new sport of ski jumping pairs.
Harada and his sons, who grow up to become the world’s first tandem ski jumpers, encounter ridicule and misunderstanding, but the sincerity of the good professor and the skills of his indomitable boys, honed in their native Hokkaido, gradually win converts and fans. The sport spreads to Europe and America, where local athletes quickly develop their own, unique styles.
Then Harada’s impossible dream - that ski jumping pairs be selected as an Olympic sport - becomes a reality at the 2006 games in Torino. First, though, tragedy strikes.
And that’s all that needs to be said about the plot and, more importantly, the gags. The NHK parody gives way to the sort of comic business that Buster Keaton, that daredevil engineer of the impossible, might have appreciated. Granted, some may find the idea of two idiots on a pair of skis simply silly. An entirely understandable reaction. On the other hand, if you’ve worn your tape of This Is Spinal Tap to a scratchy mess and can recite entire scenes from memory, you might as well line up for Road now. As Professor Harada would say, it is your destiny.