'Black Butler' - Movie Review

Prime silly Manga-turned-live-action, with our (nominal) hero being a young woman (supposed to be 17? played by Ayame Goriki) masquerading as a man to control a very large company. But I say "nominal hero" because the titular character is her butler (Hiro Mizushima), who is a demon that she's sold her soul to so that she can get revenge on the people who killed her parents. Style trumps sanity as we mix imagery from anywhere in the last 200 years (a lot of it from Europe) to come up with an aesthetic they like in a year that's approximately 2015. And the world is divided between two political entities, "East" and "West." The action takes place in the East (aka "Japan"), but our heroine is also a Watchdog for the Queen of the West, and thus has another political agenda besides revenge and managing a massive company.

I found it a little hard to generate sympathy for a person whose life is quite so far beyond my experience: indescribably rich spy who's a teenager masquerading as the opposite gender while pursuing revenge that has nothing to do with her espionage work (which she inherited from her grandfather). Mizushima was a bit silly but also kind of compelling as the demon butler, and the visual aesthetic was at least mildly interesting, but overall a rather poor film.