Rating: **
Definitely a letdown for fans of the series, especially since the production quality is top-notch. This is easily the most confusing film I have ever seen. Even within the insanity of the Urusei Yatsura universe, this film is out of bounds. A school film that Ataru and his pals are producing goes haywire when a giant cherry tree is felled. Lum disappears and peoples' dreams start leaving "residue" around town. Then, the entire city goes to war in an effort to return things to normal. Huh?!? It's nearly impossible to tell when the film starts getting out of hand. It may be as early as five minutes into the story, when the viewer is given their first clue that the rest of the film may just be a dreamlike hallucination of the collective consciousness of the town itself. Too weird for me...
After watching the film for the fourth time (and still being totally confused), I picked up on something that Megane said which really stuck with me. Chibi is complaining about working with a certain prop on their film and Megane says "Don't worry, it's only a MacGuffin. It's meaningless." That's when it occurred to me that everything in the movie was a MacGuffin. Nothing had any significance, and everything that was introduced was ultimately ignored or dismissed, making the film an exhausting exercise in absurdity and futility. I was actually buying into the film's dreamlike premise for the first hour, but when the town goes to war, the movie completely falls apart and destroys any good will it might have been trying to foster. It's at this point that it feels like the director doesn't like the source material and is taking out his frustrations on the characters. It's a bizarre and incomprehensible experience.