Josef Kubota Wladyka’s newest film, Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, is a simple, and mostly compelling story about Haru, a competitive ballroom dancer living in Tokyo. After a tragedy causes her to pull away from the people and activities she once loved, Haru finds herself drawn back into the dance world when her friends push her to get out of her grieving funk. When a new dance instructor enters her life, she decides to keep dancing. While Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! doesn’t have much of a story or plot, it does offer up an interesting character study. The film doesn’t give us everything we want to know about Haru, but it does give us something to consider when trying to overcome grief.

The best aspect of the movie is the lead performance from Rinko Kikuchi. She plays Haru in a way that makes her incredibly mysterious and a tough nut to crack. I was surprised by how unpredictable she felt, and I often found myself unsure of how Haru would react to certain situations. At the very least, it kept things interesting. Kikuchi also brings some impressive comedic zing to the performance, and when she needs to go to a darker and deeper place, she is more than up to the task. Her compelling presence does make some of the other performances feel weaker by comparison. What were already some shaky performances became even more noticeable when sharing the screen with Kikuchi.

Given how good Kikuchi’s performance was, I found it mildly frustrating that I never fully bought into the way Haru was written. I desperately wanted Kikuchi’s performance to match the character’s arc, but the writing never quite gets there. Kikuchi gives us a performance that feels much deeper and more layered than what the script ultimately gives her to work with. Unfortunately, the writing doesn’t quite meet Kikuchi at her level.

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! is less straightforward than you might have thought, and it includes some intriguing surrealist moments. Although I appreciate filmmakers taking big swings, I did find most of these moments of the film to be more miss than hit. These moments are clearly meant to give us some insight into Haru’s thought process as she tries to navigate such a difficult time in her life, but for me, they occasionally cause more harm than good. The film is also very interested in dance (obviously), and I love that this element comes through as strongly as it does, but I didn’t always love the surrealist execution. Much of the way dance is expressed in the film comes through extended dance numbers that are portrayed as fantasies or thoughts running through Haru’s mind. I love seeing the cast having fun, but these moments occasionally overstay their welcome. 

The movie also could have benefited from some trimming. Some sequences and scenes feel like they last a little too long, giving us too much time to linger on certain moments. This is especially noticeable during some of the longer dance and surreal sequences, where I found myself waiting for the scene to move on rather than becoming more invested in what was happening. Rather than giving me more time to think about what I was watching or sit with what Haru was experiencing, that extra time occasionally caused my mind to drift. There are moments where the movie seems to trust that simply lingering on a scene will make it more meaningful, but that didn’t always work for me. I wouldn’t necessarily call this a pacing issue, but more an issue with the length of individual scenes and the film as a whole. The movie isn’t constantly dragging, but there are enough moments where I felt its runtime that it became noticeable. With a little trimming and a slightly tighter approach to some of these sequences, I think there’s a much more compelling and effective movie here.

In order to keep this spoiler-free, I’ll keep my thoughts on the outcome as vague as possible. I liked where Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! goes for the most part, but its final resting place comes rather suddenly and without much justification. It’s not that the ending is necessarily out of character or off-putting, but it ultimately feels unearned given how rushed everything feels. That’s even more surprising considering this isn’t necessarily a short movie. After spending so much time with Haru, I wanted the film to give its finale a little more room to breathe and make its destination feel more natural. It’s a bummer that the final moments leave me with a slightly sour taste, because there are still plenty of things to admire about Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!.

6.2/10

Movie: Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! (2026)
Production Company: JDM Pictures
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Producer(s): Josef Kubota Wladyka, Mao Nagakura, Kimberly Parker Zox
Directed by: Josef Kubota Wladyka
Written by: Josef Kubota Wladyka, Nicholas Huynh
Starring: Rinko Kikuchi, Alberto Guerra, Alejandro Edda, You, Yoh Yoshida, Damián Alcázar
Review by: Stefano Todaro