Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! Review: A Rinko Kikuchi Showcase That Needed Reining In

Through its many big stylistic swings, Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! nearly loses the audience, but the film's talented stars hold it all together.

Published Sep 10, 2026, 3:43 PM EDT

Josh is a film critic and journalist with over nine years of experience in the entertainment industry. Entering the field at just 17 years old, Josh went on to make his own website, The HoloFiles, and social media brand Star Wars Holocron, the most followed Star Wars fan account on Twitter/X.

A member of both the Chicago Indie Critics and the Hollywood Critics Alliance, Josh has covered major industry events including Star Wars Celebration and, most recently, CinemaCon for ScreenRant. His work has appeared in outlets such as Game Rant and Comic Book Resources (CBR), and he has been featured in publications including the BBC and The New York Times.

In the middle act of Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!, which screens this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, a group of intoxicated men bump into woman named Haru (Rinko Kikuchi) while on the street. Another character, Fedir (Alberto Guerra), steps in to defend her, demanding an apology. A fist fight ensues – that quickly turns into a synchronized dance sequence, timed to the hits and misses of the battle.

The broader film follows Haru, a dancer who abruptly loses her husband, Luis (Alejandro Edda), following a cardiac arrest. His death sends her into a deep depression, unsure of what to do with her life or how to move on. Haru’s friends are insistent that she come out with them, which leads to her meeting Fedir, a dance instructor with similarities to her late husband. Not only do the two share the same profession, but Fedir has a Central American background, too.

The aforementioned scene comes when Ha-Chan is on a date; Fedir is her partner for the night, and the two are just coming back from a quaint evening. The sequence stands out not only because it’s one of the film’s bigger set pieces, but because it encapsulates so much about Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!. It’s quirky, over the top, and entertaining, yet also suffers from a confused tone and a genre mismatch that the film ultimately fails to overcome.

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! Is Overly Ambitious, But Saved By Its Actors

That Ha-Chan fails to commit to a given genre is abundantly clear not only from this scene, but from the rest of the film as well. At times, it plays as an absurdist comedy, with characters acting above and beyond what any typical human being would. The unrealistic way of behaving leads to many of the jokes falling flat.

At the same time, these heightened moments are enough to dampen the emotional impact of some of the more tender scenes. The death of Ha-Chan’s husband, for example, is the catalyst for the film’s primary theme, grief. Yet, the audience fails to feel the full extent of her loss until the final few scenes, in part because of the absurdist humor that the filmmakers lean into. As a result, the feelings of grief and loss are too distant to appreciate in their entirety.

Kikuchi’s prowess is on full display here...

Despite these shortcomings, some strong performances help bring up Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!. Haru is portrayed by Rinko Kikuchi, a seasoned Japanese actress who has not only appeared in blockbusters like Pacific Rim, but was also nominated for an Academy Award for her role in 2006's Babel. Kikuchi’s prowess is on full display here, as so much of the story rests on her shoulders. Her character is in virtually every scene, and even in the film’s weaker moments (such as when it goes too heavily into borderline-meaningless dream sequences), she helps to keep the film watchable at the very least. Not only that, but Kikuchi’s performance also ensures continual investment in her character from the audience, even when so many of the film’s bold swings fail to pay off.

Kikuchi’s chemistry with Alberto Guerra is another highlight of the film. Even in the mismatched and confused street dance/fight sequence, he has enough screen presence to command the attention of the audience and remain authentic to the character he’s playing. Guerra has often appeared in crime dramas, such as Crime Diaries: The Candidate and Narcos: Mexico, but he shows another side of his abilities in Ha-Chan that has seldom been seen since he made his acting debut in Vale todo.

Ultimately, this means that, even when the movie suffers from its own over-ambition and genre juggling, the main characters are still interesting enough for the viewer to remain seated. It may not be a perfect film, far from it, but Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty still has enough substance to be worth the watch.

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! screened at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival, and is scheduled for a US theatrical release on September 25.