I found the series to be quite okay, and I honestly wasn’t expecting the movie to be any better, if not, worse. And yes, it indeed was, probably tenfold worse. “Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl” is one of the worst movies I’ve ever watched in a very long time. To be honest, I’d never expect this movie to be this awful of an evidently devious disingenuous melodramatic tear-gushing tryhard.Before starting my review, as to some opinions, this might seem like a nitpicking review, but no. Neglecting plot holes, poor characterization, etc. and claiming one is avoiding nitpicking is foolish. This will be a full in-depth analysis to thus express why I dislike this movie so much.______________________________ART:After the indisputable success of the series and for being only a 90-minute movie, I very much believe us audience deserve better quality than this. It’s basically akin to the series, which isn’t atrocious, just simply uninspired and mediocre. Though, I want to particularly point out the awful CGI (human CGI is inarguably one of the worst backgrounds this industry has to offer) as well as the queer 2D drawing in the middle of the 3D background. I might be griping, but I expect a movie’s quality to exceed this. The animation is okay most of the time. If anything, my complaint would essentially hinge on some certain off-quality scenes, but I think it was not critical. The art style is never of my predilection as I do not fond of the design and dull color palette, but I am well-harmonized so again, it’s fine. Conclusively, it is simply average.-----------------WRITING:I could not have been moved or impressed by this kind of plot, really. If anything, I was abhorred by such a blatantly manipulative story that has no consistency whatsoever. There is no substance or even essence in this movie, it really is just a huge package of utterly superficial emotional manipulation. As you see, the movie is in toto a tear-fest where virtually every character has to cascade their interminable rivulet of tears to intimate their insuperable pain for at least not once, but twice, for such is the most subtle and artistic method to present one’s dejected emotions. On serious note, crying should've been powerful and relevantly timed, unlike this lazy and dodgy representation of one's sadness.The melodramatic writing is also hugely responsible for emotional manipulation. To elaborate, the writing solely relies on poignant deaths. Undeniably, there is this one death that I find very shocking, but of course, I unequivocally disdain it – not because it's sad or too surprising, but because it's unrealistic and spontaneous. It is an important plot device, yet not at all convincing or emotional; it's just stupid and out of place. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with deaths. Forasmuch as leveraging manipulation and spuriousness to foment grief within the audience on the other hand is cheap, meretricious and disrespectful. Not to mention, pretty much the whole purpose of these deaths, aside from pushing forward the plot, is to characterize. Yet nothing is really put forward. Deaths therefore hold not much meaning, and again, it seems that its core purpose is to emotionally manipulate the viewers.Anent the premise, this movie au fond is a time-travel movie, a banal, lackluster and abysmal one. With a bit of non-sense quantum blabbering and a few illogical small talks with the smart eye-glassed girl, the idea of time traveling is thereby conceptualized. And it never elucidates any beforehand conditions and repercussions of time travel, as if the author himself doesn’t know what he is writing about. But that inconsistency aside, I would want to criticize the time-travelling idea itself. Anyone who acknowledges the more or less impenetrable complexity of the concept called ‘time’ simply understands that time travel necessitates meticulous fictional accounts. By making it so vague and providing so little details, it feels as though the director was trying to make things as, in fact, feasible as possible, but in a way that viewers would be disabused that it made sense because it said so. To further clarify my point, they never fully explained how you time travel, but simply based on quantum physics and some ambiguous supernatural phenomena because it might sound sophisticated and condensed, so that it could trick viewers into thinking that it ultimately would make sense regardless of how non-sensical it might turn out to be (I.e. whenever a ramification arises, we are forced to automatically accept it while simultaneously think “Oh, didn’t know that could happen, I guess time traveling really isn’t all that easy. I must express some meager empathy to the characters now must I not?”). Honestly, everything is just randomly presented without much exposition via this time travel concept, for the sake of plot convenience that completely steers clear of any proper explanation; and I simply could not appreciate the fact that the author would do anything to control the emotions of their audience, even if it might involve an awfully poorly-written premise.I also notice people have stated how this movie reminded them of some other popular anime such as “The Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi” or “Steins;Gate”. It wouldn’t be unjust to call out how this movie plagiarizes a lot of ideas and styles, and I believe it is already quite clear in the first place so I see no point in dissecting the similarities. I guess Kamoshida Hajime should learn something from Tarantino or some successful "stealers" next time. For not only this man's writing resembles just a bit too much with the other successful works viz. literally copying ideas, but he also fails to properly utilize its context. This is effortless, imprudent and talentless.The lack of joints betwwen basically anything is also what I've mentioned. The plot crams so many events and results in various climaxes, which makes it feel very separating. Though, I think even a plot like this might be more affiliated if the execution is pertinent; thus, I will further develop this idea in the Execution segment.-----------------CHARACTERIZATION:Absolutely appalling. Long story short, I saw zero characterization other than some (once again) manipulative emotional shit from the young Shouko writing her dreams onto a homework paper. The thing about our protagonists is that they are superficial scalloping bods who have no prominent traits, to the point where they are quite undistinguishable. If you think making lecherous jokes about private woman matters is quirky, unique and writing-demanding then you sure have a grave problem, which I won't solve it for you here unfortunately.Anyway, while it's true that our characters act upon propensity, such is too shallow to construct realistic characters in any case. As a result, the characters become so awkwardly predictable, simple and even unnatural. This means that every decision a character makes just doesn’t indicate anything remotely noteworthy. I.e. showing all the phases of depression that Sakuta has to undergo, from going to the beach, weeping to sillily shouting “Can anyone save...?”, means nothing. Whilst being established upon propensity, this scene is nothing but a subpar 'conspicuous aka not quite subtle' implication of depression that I find absolutely lazy, dull and clumsily obvious, and such (I believe) over 3-minute long scene does not further develop anything other than characters being sad in an irksomely overdramatic way. Instead of spending time on constant mourning and crying scenes like this (which take up the majority of its runtime), the movie could've made it much more subtle and short, which is far more effectively emotional, and preferably delving further into the characters. It's only obvious to assume that Sakuta would suffer boundlessly without having to show it in the most extreme way, which makes this entire scene futile. It serves no purpose and is handled annoyingly overdramatically and unrealistically, only for the sake of sensationalization, not characterization. What's worse is that the movie attempts to make the characters so facile and faultless that their resemblance to a human is completely nonexistent. To be fair, it's impossible to say there is any characterization whatsoever in this movie. And the absence of subtlety comes in every single way possible, prominently in characterization.And again, I know saying this is redundant at this point, but please, don't just approve how crying automatically suffices characterization. As to my explanation of how the plot misuses and awfully exploits it, this movie is a perfect exemplification of how crying could become a non-thematic and irrelevant device of emotional manipulation rather than good character writing/development (which is nothing superior to your orthodox ill-fitting fan service).-----------------PACING:I can rest assured that I’m not the only individual to feel that the pacing is all over the place and is never appropriate with the event happening on screen. On the whole, it is sluggish at parts where I have no idea what's so important (such as all the futile conversations between Sakuta and his friends after a certain death that he chose to let go for it was seemingly out of his capability, all just to show Ah, tranquility is back baby), whereas some pivotal conversations are unceremoniously bundled without much contrivance. Often times, things happen without much build-up. But I don't care anyway, since there is nothing significant to worth the pacing a remark.-----------------EXECUTION:About the execution, this movie fails terribly no matter how I inveigle myself. It feels like four episodes wedged altogether, without a coherent and consistent narration. With probably roughly 3 climaxes (or so) and a handful of endings, being underwhelmed would be an understatement to transcribe my feelings. Basically, every "fake ending" tags along with a climax, and so nothing feels emphasized for there exists so many of them in just a duration of 90 minutes. Not to mention I was so confused whenever it "faked" its conclusion, so I literally couldn't stop checking the time to confirm whether the "ending" I was seeing was just some sort of funny bamboozlement or not (btw 90 minutes felt like dreadful 3 hours or sth). That being said I believe that the director focuses way too much on his abundant impactful climaxes with out of the blue twists and yet he still fails in properly doing so; also for that matter, he completely disregards the importance of theme impartation. His focus is so into impactful climaxes stacked with emotional manipulation that he himself doesn't properly think about what the core - primary themes - of the story truly is (if it really ever had a core). Say, whether the themes are sacrifice and love, which many might query to reasonably defend the movie, I regardless don’t see much depth in these theme's promulgation. There’s no symbolism or connotation, no rhetorical conceptions, no profundity in terms of storytelling or writing, no subtlety (probably because there's nothing to tell to even be subtle about) and no exploration. All I witnessed is forced drama to therefore force our poor characters to cry as much as they possibly could, without any further meaning to it. Accordingly, I would even bring myself to assert that there are no consistent themes whatsoever because there are no implications to demonstrate otherwise. In literal terms, 'what we see is what we get'.And yet so far I haven’t even nitpicked on trivialities, because it would ineluctably bring about countless hate speeches (“wtf is that scene where Shouko helpes Sakuta to get on the bed? That is one of the most, if not the most artless scenes in a movie that takes itself seriously”), but lets not talk about that here. On side note, the jokes are dry as usual, but far more unfunny and cheap. I, unlike many, particularly find it uncomfortably skeptical about the likelihood of Sakuta's lecherous jokes to realistically achieve its magnificent triumph like in this series. I would wholeheartedly recommend people to stop laughing at this jester's unfunny little jokes about woman's body and habits really, for I find it highly unappetizing.-----------------ENJOYMENT:I believe there's nothing to be enunciated here. I struggled every second for it to end and cringed every time a character broke down and shed their incessant outpouring of tears. I hated this.-----------------SOUND:Boring typical rom-com music, I don’t remember much. Voice acting is actually fairly good.-----------------TITLE:I hate the title. All these long ass names that visually and content-wise attract viewers trend should stop. It’s cancerous.______________________________This is an awful movie, and I would never recommend this movie to anyone, you have my words. I literally can’t imagine how anyone walking out of the theater be crying over this movie (good thing is there's no one in my theater did). Maybe I’m way too apathetic, but this movie gave me absolutely no emotions that it should’ve given. I probably will have no recollection on this movie after a week or so, and I won’t care about it after finishing this review either. For God’s sake I hope the score will get lowered and this will no longer be in the Top 100.