Koara kachô

I'm sure I missed some of the nation-specific satirical barbs in this off the wall Japanese comedy about cutthroat corporate culture and an anthropomorphic koala who may or may not be a killer. To this Western viewer, "Executive Koala" played like an Adult Swim entry with its unfailing, straight faced commitment to the absurd. Trying to cope with the disappearance of his wife, businessman and man-sized koala Tamura attempts to lose himself in corporate negotiations. He increasingly finds himself haunted by memories of violence and develops a tendency to fly into fits of unbridled rage accompanied by blinking, glowing eyes.

I don't want to spoil any of the film's surprises and would advise renters to avert their eyes from the DVD label as it gives away one of the film's best visual gags. Those viewers who complain about the cheap special effects--for instance, the zipper being visible on the Koala's costume--have failed to realize that these are both budget and style choices. Director Kawasaki, who previously brought us "Rug Cop" and "Calamari Wrestler," has developed a cheapo aesthetic and this is an undeniable part of the film's charm. Troma fans are sure to be delighted by Kawasaki, but will find a sweeter, more gentle film in "Koala" than those produced by Kaufman.

But a little of this goes a long way and the film's story is too flimsy to be compelling. The film works to a degree as it continually amps up the absurdity, but the plot is a tired retread of Hithcock themes with more concern about style than storytelling. It's DePalma for furries.

Bizarre hardly begins to describe this peculiar offering. Tamura is a divorced company employee about to embark on a new venture with his company. Suddenly is sweetheart is found murdered and he's the prime suspect. Did I mention that Tamura is a koala? No? Oh! The fact that he is a koala doesn't seem to have any bearing on the plot at all. It's more of a strange distraction from the films inability to focus. By the time it gets to amnesia, implanted memories, and a shady past, it is all a bit too much. Certainly enjoyable at times, but when switching from dreamlike martial art sequences and axe murder, you can't really fathom what it's aiming to do.

The front of the DVD advertises Executive Koala as being apart of the "Minoru Kawasaki Collection", which made me chuckle twice as, first, I had never heard of him and the DVD assumed he was a director of stature enough to already have a 'collection', and secondly that his collection of films is of the kind of work that makes Japanese entertainment seem as wild and crazy and cute as it is. A sampling of his titles include The Calamari Wrestler, The Rug Cop, and Best Hit! Parade!, and he doesn't seem to be stopping yet, mostly through direct-to-video stuff that Takashi Miike would probably turn down. And with this film he has what is a kind of psycho-Kafka parable with a giant Koala-man fighting for his sanity and justice in a murder case. ... Yeah.

Why a giant Koala? Hey, why the hell not? I love that the director doesn't really explain that there is a giant Koala-Man, nor that his boss is a giant rabbit, nor that there is a small role for a giant Frog who works at a convenience store. Everyone else in the film is human, and with the exception that the Koala is suspected of murdering a girl, and then possibly his ex-wife, or maybe more than that stemming from a childhood of evil, no one takes him being a Koala as not normal. It's just one of those 'things' in Japan, as if the mentality of the Muppets is so straightforward for them, albeit in this case in a dark-comedy-thriller context where the Koala goes insane with red-eyes and KILLS KILLS like a robot.

The film grows to be a big entertainment mostly near the end with a big climactic fight that had me and my friends howling with laughter and cheering. Up until then, it has a curious disposition: it is funny, yes, but it also 'tries' to be funny in some ways that don't work, except maybe in some inside-joke way that Japansese would get and Western audiences would feel out of the loop. But the film has a great charm to it, and knows what it is enough to poke fun at itself (i.e. those flashback scenes the Koala has with his 'romance' stuff), and actually gets oddly dark when the Koala is sent to prison(!) in a fake Alcatraz scenario where he's bullied by everybody else.

Executive Koala is recommendable to certain movie buffs. It's not a movie you tell your mother to watch unless she happens to have an affinity for weird anthropomorphic stories of corporate and psychological horror. But if you're hanging out with friends and want that next rush of crazy-Japanese filmmaking (or for Japan is, um, just another Thursday), it's fun and different. And the Koala-man is actually a good actor! I would credit him but IMDb doesn't provide any names for anyone (perhaps due to it being an anonymity thing, or just because of laziness).

Just one year after the superb and absurd Calamari Wrestler, Minoru Kawasaki knocked it out of the park again with the equally gonzo Executive Koala. The former I watched about this time last week, and I've found both films to be two of the funniest I've watched all year. Kawasaki may be some kind of genius, and I very much want to dig into his filmography more.

Executive Koala follows a businessman who's also a koala, and he's worried he might be a serial killer... or possibly having vivid dreams that he's a serial killer. Honestly, the first 2/3s feels like American Psycho if it was set in Japan and Patrick Bateman was a koala. It becomes something else entirely in its final third, but I'm not sure I could explain how it gets there, even if I was okay with spoiling things.

There were a couple of points where Executive Koala almost lost me, but whenever that came close to happening, it would find a way to top the absurdity that came before, leading to continual hilarity throughout. Lots of this is genuinely hilarious, laugh out loud stuff, and it's the kind of comedy that's simultaneously genius and also very, very stupid. I just love most of what this and Calamari Wrestler offer, but both feel like acquired tastes for sure.

This movie is so very special. One minute I was thinking it was the worst movie I'd seen and a minute later think it was one of the funniest. Its a strange one, that is for sure.

I've not seen much, if any, Japanese movies so how much of the bad acting is just bad acting or cultural or deliberate, I can't say. Either way, it amused me. As did the pure absurdity of the whole story and where it went. I wouldn't call it a thriller cause I wasn't on the edge of my seat but I definitely wondered where we were going. And when we got there it wasn't what I expected, but isn't that what you want in a movie? I'd like to give a better description of this thing but it is so absurd and so random that I don't know where to begin. If you are wondering if you should watch it, let me put it this way. If you are a fairly mainstream movie going type person the answer is no. If you are a fan of the weird, the funny, the absurd, the surreal, or the slightly off kilter then i say go for it. Was it a good story? eh. Was I entertained? Absolutely.