The Invention of Dr. Nakamats

2009 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A few days in the life of the titular inventor, a Japanese genius with well over 3,000 patents including, apparently, the floppy disc.

He speaks about himself in the third person, takes pictures of every one of his meals to chronicle his eating, claims that he will live to be 160 years old, egotistically names things after himself, gets only 4 hours of sleep a night, takes credit for inventing glass (OK, that's partially taken out of context), can tell how good a camera is by smelling it, invented radio-controlled roller skates, and created a pencil and notepad that can be used underwater since his best ideas come when he is 5 seconds from death and needs to nearly drown himself in order to invent. Nakamats is eccentric, almost the point where you wonder if he's just dicking around to mess with the documentarians, but he is fairly interesting. There's almost this arrogance or feeling of self-importance that makes him unlikable. At the same time, he's such a funny little man that you wind up liking him. The documentary filmmakers don't get in the way at all here. Nobody attempts to explain or refute or anything else. You get about an hour of Nakamats doing his Nakamats thing, about the time that you can handle.