After he fails to follow in his father's footsteps (or pawsteps), Taisho finds himself out on the streets looking for a purpose to his life. When he gets a job in a sushi bar, he finally feels like he has found his calling and vows to one day own his own restaurant. Unfortunately, he can't stop eating the fish so he decides it would be wiser to learn the art of making ramen. Several years later and his dream realised, Taisho has settled in nicely and even finds a friend in a regular customer who seems to support his every decision. However, his business comes under threat when a mysterious new ramen-making cat moves into the area and seems to be better in every possible way...

If you're yet to experience the unique charms of 'Neko Ramen', the above synopsis may seem somewhat bizarre. Although that's a pretty fair assessment considering the idea focuses around a cat working in a ramen shop, the original show possessed a very deadpan sense of humour that made it well worth a watch. Unfortunately, making the leap to live-action cinema probably wasn't the best way to bring 'Neko Ramen' to the masses.

The first and most obvious problem with this conversion is that there just isn't sufficient depth in the source material to stretch it out to feature length. In the show, we never actually needed to know or care about anyone involved, and the silly surroundings were mere framework for a series of well-implemented jokes. As you can imagine, this means that the movie has no idea how to expand upon the characters or create a competent story. Instead, all we get is the basic plotlines from the original shows thrown together into a garbled opening before the film runs out of steam and blatantly starts to pad with a ridiculously lightweight rivalry scenario.

 
Similarly, the comedy in 'Neko Ramen' doesn't seem to work as well when presented in movie format. Most of the gags were designed as a punchline to a two minute sketch, but here they are needlessly dragged out to the point where they start to feel awkward. It's also somewhat disappointing that they choose to recycle all of the jokes from the show, so for any fans that are watching it's just like being punished with a downgraded version of the original. As mentioned before though, this does eventually dry up and then they just resort to making the puppet look stupid by putting him against real life backdrops. This includes five whole minutes of him being thrust into the faces of real cats, which gets... well, a little uncomfortable to say the least.

Acting-wise, it's fair to say that 'Neko Ramen' also has very little to offer. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the replacement of the original voice artist, Rie Nakagawa. While Toru Furuya does an adequate job as Taisho, it just seemed like Nakagawa really nailed the role and it's a shame that they didn't bother to bring him back. Kazuki Kato as "the customer" doesn't really bring much to the role either, as he seems too clean cut and good looking to be your everyday businessman and his line delivery is far from perfect. Outside of these two, most of the other actors are bit part players and really do little more than statically recite a few lines before their job is done. While none of them are exactly awful, it definitely feels more like TV movie quality than a cinematic production.

In the end, 'Neko Ramen Taisho' doesn't work simply because there just isn't enough to work with here. The story is weak as water and most of the humour falls flat, with even the puppet thing getting old very quickly. If you like the sound of the idea, do yourself a favour and pick up the series instead.