One has to think that when you�re a member of the Hello! Project, the umbrella name given to all the pop groups managed by the UP-FRONT Agency and produced by Tsunku, you�re probably going to get a whole lot of movie deals. To actually accept one of these offers it�s safe to assume the project would have to be high-quality, time-efficient, and (perhaps most importantly) fairly innocuous so as not to sully the carefully cultivated image each member is expected to maintain. 17sai Tabidachi no Futari is no exception. This film is pretty much exactly the type of drama you would expect from Miki Fujimoto and Rika Ishikawa, the two most outwardly-melancholy members of Hello! Project (although in recent years Ishikawa has stepped up her peppy-factor quite a bit). It�s a basic-as-it-gets coming of age drama engineered to make you feel kinda bad, then kinda good, and then kinda bad again—but never too far in either direction. That mixed with a completely unrealistic dose of teenage innocence is the tried and true recipe for these types of dramas and “Seventeen” doesn�t stray from it whatsoever.

Ishikawa stars Maiko, a girl who was given up by her father at the age of three and has lived in a foster home ever since. One day her foster brother turns up missing and she�s given the task of finding him. She�s contacted by a girl named Lisa (Fujimoto) who the boy immediately took a shine to and started following around. Lisa is a pessimistic girl who spends most of her time lamenting the fact that her mom is a bit of a trollop and seems to care more about the men she brings home than her own daughter. This first meeting is brief but sets the stage for a future friendship.

Maiko is an aspiring artist and intends to write and illustrate children�s books some day. With the encouragement of her art teacher (whom she has a huge crush on, of course) she decides to show her most recent picture book to an editor he knows at a publishing company. Unfortunately the editor doesn�t like her story very much and she feels like her dream is crushed.

Meanwhile, Lisa has more problems with her mother putting too much faith in guys that are just using her and decides to leave home for a while. She crosses paths with Maiko again and the two of them bond more. Later on Maiko discovers her father has come back to Japan to meet her and she must decide if she�s ready for that or not.

As you can probably tell, none of the conflicts or problems in this film are even remotely earth-shattering. It�s basically just the story of two girls over-dramatizing every aspect of their lives and dwelling on every little detail. But then again the popularity of Asian dramas over the years has proven that you don�t really need to be completely outrageous or scandalous to be entertaining on some level. People love these types of dramas because of their simplicity and innocence, not in spite of it. Seventeen accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish and boasts a very good cast of established dramatic actors. Even Ishikawa and Fujimoto do a pretty good job considering their lack of film experience. Aside from some horrendously difficult to understand subtitles on my HK DVD I can�t really find much bad to say about this one, or good for that matter. It is what it is and if you like this sort of thing you�ll probably enjoy it. How�s that for noncommital?

One has to think that when you�re a member of the Hello! Project, the umbrella name given to all the pop groups managed by the UP-FRONT Agency and produced by Tsunku, you�re probably going to get a whole lot of movie deals. To actually accept one of these offers it�s safe to assume the project would have to be high-quality, time-efficient, and (perhaps most importantly) fairly innocuous so as not to sully the carefully cultivated image each member is expected to maintain. 17sai Tabidachi no Futari is no exception. This film is pretty much exactly the type of drama you would expect from Miki Fujimoto and Rika Ishikawa, the two most outwardly-melancholy members of Hello! Project (although in recent years Ishikawa has stepped up her peppy-factor quite a bit). It�s a basic-as-it-gets coming of age drama engineered to make you feel kinda bad, then kinda good, and then kinda bad again—but never too far in either direction. That mixed with a completely unrealistic dose of teenage innocence is the tried and true recipe for these types of dramas and “Seventeen” doesn�t stray from it whatsoever.

Ishikawa stars Maiko, a girl who was given up by her father at the age of three and has lived in a foster home ever since. One day her foster brother turns up missing and she�s given the task of finding him. She�s contacted by a girl named Lisa (Fujimoto) who the boy immediately took a shine to and started following around. Lisa is a pessimistic girl who spends most of her time lamenting the fact that her mom is a bit of a trollop and seems to care more about the men she brings home than her own daughter. This first meeting is brief but sets the stage for a future friendship.

Maiko is an aspiring artist and intends to write and illustrate children�s books some day. With the encouragement of her art teacher (whom she has a huge crush on, of course) she decides to show her most recent picture book to an editor he knows at a publishing company. Unfortunately the editor doesn�t like her story very much and she feels like her dream is crushed.

Meanwhile, Lisa has more problems with her mother putting too much faith in guys that are just using her and decides to leave home for a while. She crosses paths with Maiko again and the two of them bond more. Later on Maiko discovers her father has come back to Japan to meet her and she must decide if she�s ready for that or not.

As you can probably tell, none of the conflicts or problems in this film are even remotely earth-shattering. It�s basically just the story of two girls over-dramatizing every aspect of their lives and dwelling on every little detail. But then again the popularity of Asian dramas over the years has proven that you don�t really need to be completely outrageous or scandalous to be entertaining on some level. People love these types of dramas because of their simplicity and innocence, not in spite of it. Seventeen accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish and boasts a very good cast of established dramatic actors. Even Ishikawa and Fujimoto do a pretty good job considering their lack of film experience. Aside from some horrendously difficult to understand subtitles on my HK DVD I can�t really find much bad to say about this one, or good for that matter. It is what it is and if you like this sort of thing you�ll probably enjoy it. How�s that for noncommital?