I remember watching this film in the 1960s on Kukla, Fran and Ollie's Children's Film Festival. I recall it being such a powerful message on the value of friendship and believing in yourself. The story revolves around a lonely and overweight boy (Oyama) who moves to a new city and a new school. He is disliked and teased almost from the start because of weight. Another boy (Komatsu) befriends him despite what the others think, and he begins to effect the way the others and even Oyama sees himself. A few years ago I purchased the video online and watched it again. It was as good as I remembered and I have shown the film to many of my elementary students. I highly recommend this movie!

I'll admit first of all that I don't remember details of this movie (no danger of a spoiler!), but I did an Internet search for it simply because of the impact it made on me 40 years ago when I saw it as a child of seven, which is the approximate age of the characters. I do remember that the movie was in Japanese, which seemed quite novel to me, but which in no way deterred from the story or the impact. To this day, I am still moved emotionally by the story of friendship, love, and courageous acceptance between two boys, one socially acceptable, one not. I am glad to discover so many others across the world enjoyed "my" movie.

Growing up, I used to watch Kukla Fran, and Ollie's Children's Film Festivals on Saturdays and I believe this was the first film shown. It was so impressionable that, 30 years later, I searched far and wide to obtain a copy and STILL enjoy it as much as I did as a child. Skinny and Fatty is about friendship, courage and solidarity. The story takes place in Japan, where a fat boy moves into an unfamiliar town and finds himself isolated from his classmates. One boy (who's small) befriends him, but in doing so isolates himself from his friends. The film does an amazing job of getting the viewer to sympathize with the fat boy and at the same time feel for the skinny one, who is constantly encouraging his new friend. "You can do it!" he's heard telling his fat friend who can barely get off the ground while trying to climb the rope in gym. It's a great movie for kids, who are taught that being a nice person sometimes means not following the crowd or your friends. It's also refreshing for adults, who sometimes lose sight of these principles too. Just an amazing film - it shows what a filmmaker can do in 45 minutes if all the material is pertinent and excludes the fluff and special effects included in many of today's movies. Btw, if you want the toy in the movie referenced in the previous review, it's called Kendama.

This movie about the friendship between two Japanese schoolboys is intended for children, aged about eight or so ... about the same age as this movie's protagonists. Many western children might find this film alienating, as it's in Japanese (I viewed a print with English subtitles), the entire cast are Japanese ... and because the world of the 1950s is very different from our own world. An American child who watched this movie with me kept impatiently asking why the Japanese boys didn't have video games or anime.IMDb's plot outline for this movie is accurate, except that the 'skinny' boy isn't actually skinny; his physique is normal. The new boy in class is Komatsu: he is very heavy-set, and straight away all the other boys (except Skinny) shun him and cry him 'Fatty'. When Skinny tries to make friends with Fatty, all of Skinny's shallow friends taunt him for befriending the fat boy. I found this story all too plausible.The fat boy's parents have got more money than Skinny's family, so his friendship with Fatty enables Skinny to experience upper middle-class pleasures (such as a swimming pool) that he wouldn't have known on his tod. Eventually, Fatty begins to wonder whether Skinny likes him for himself or for material reasons. Meanwhile, Skinny feels a powerful peer-pressure from his schoolmates: in order to regain their approval, he'll have to betray Fatty. Again, I found this painfully plausible.SLIGHT SPOILER NOW. The movie doesn't really have a climax, but there's a nice bit of business with one of those toys on a stick. I don't know what it's called; there's a ball at the end of a string tied to a stick, and a cup at one end of the stick. You've got to flip the stick just the right way so that the ball pops into the cup. (A correspondent has told me that this toy is named Kendama; I'll take his word for it.) Anyroad, one boy is able to use this plaything properly but the other boy isn't ... until the end of the movie. There's some beautifully stark photography as the two boys walk along in a large open area with a few skeletally leafless trees.I found this movie to be a very accurate depiction of some of the more painful aspects of childhood, and for that reason watching this movie was more a painful experience for me than a pleasant one. The production budget is nil -- it's shot in documentary style -- but the movie does give some interesting views of urban Japan in the late 1950s. I'll rate this quietly triumphant movie 7 out of 10.