Door into Summer
Director(s) Takahiro Miki
Screenplay By Tomoe Kanno
Date Released 12/28/2021
Where To Watch Netflix
Genre(s) Drama, Sci-Fi, Young Adult, Non-English, Family, Mystery
Duration 1 Hour, 58 Minutes
Content Rating TV-PG
Noted Cast
Soichiro Kento Yamazaki
Riko Kaya Kiyohara
PETE Naohito Fujiki
Professor Toi Tomorô Taguchi
Rin Shiraishi Natsuna Watanabe
Kazuhito Matsushita Hidekazu Mashima
Taro Sato Taizo Harada
Midori Sato Rin Takanashi
Gota Tsuboi Kenta Hamano
Soichiro Takakura (young) – Ryoka Minamide
Seeing the Robert A. Heinlein juvenile classic the Door into Summer as a Japanese film version was a bit jarring, since in the Heinlein book, the all-American protagonist was named Daniel Boone Davis, his love interest, Rikki (Riko in the movie), and the antagonists who screw Davis out of his company are named Miles (Kazuhito) and Belle (Miss Shiraishi). The most arresting character in the book, Pete, keeps his name in the movie, although it’s pronounced “Pito”. He isn’t as prominent in the movie since he is, in fact a cat, and among other things, can’t beat the stuffing out of two adult humans.
The movie takes an utterly different set of time frames (book written in 1956, “base year” 1970, following a nuclear war, and the “future” of 2000) and makes a few other changes. Soichiro overcomes a challenging childhood to become a dominant engineer in Japan in 1997. His early AI robotic invention has caused a stir, and it’s clear his invention and company are destined for great things. But his business partner and his girlfriend (daughter of said partner) shaft him and hijack his company and all his patents.
He goes on a bender, and spots an ad for “Cold Sleep” (cryogenic preservation). He and Pete plan to sign up for a 30-year term, escaping his present. However, the doctor notices that he’s been drinking, and tells him to go home and sober up. Soichiro decides instead to confront his erstwhile allies. They drug him, steal most of the money he had from the corporation, and get him placed in cold sleep with a rival outfit—without Pete.
He wakes up in 2025, broke and with nothing but a state stipend and five days of care from an AI robot (PETE-13), that he quickly realizes is based on his work. Over those five days he studies records to determine who did what to whom and who got paid during the events leading up to his life hijacking. He finds Miss Shirashi, his former fiancee, and finds her a drunken, bloated, filth-encrusted wreck, bitter at how he thwarted all her plans back in 1997.
He remembers an old crackpot in his neighborhood in 1997 who was working on a time machine. He looks him up, and finds that he has a time machine that can send him back. Yeah, kinda fortuitous, that. He goes back to 1997 with the goal of putting everything to rights.
The movie is surprisingly true to the book, given the shifting time frame and to a degree, the cultural shifts. There were two significant changes that greatly improved the movie. First, the presence of PETE-13, and his role in unraveling what happened in 1997 fills a massive gap of plot advancement that in the book takes place in the first-person limited narrative, something that can’t translate well to screen. Second, there’s the matter of Rikki. In the book, she was 11 years old, and there was an undeniable sexual attraction between her and the 30 year old narrator. Creepy, but remember, this was a young adult book from the 50s—it doesn’t get nasty. I was 12 when I read it, and saw nothing wrong with being sexually attracted to 11 year old girls. A re-read some twenty years later left me going, “Oh, yeah, that’s not right.” In the movie, Rikki is 17, and Soichiro is about 25, which makes the proposal of marriage that comes along a lot less strange.
It’s important to remember this is a children’s book so there isn’t any gore, or particular violence (even the mayhem wrought by Pete amounts to one cat scratch). So it’s not like most of the time travel movies out there. But if you enjoyed the original book, you’ll enjoy this. Takahiro Miki and Tomoe Kanno did a creditable job of updating and broadening the original Heinlein tale without spoiling it, and that is an accomplishment.
Now on Netflix.