A Felicidade dos Katakuris

The maverick like Takashi Miike, who sends up Japanese culture in many of his films, directed this film about a family who have a guest house in the middle of nowhere, where the (few) lodgers end up dead by morning. And, its a musical! The film is all over the map and even includes some claymation. It is not bad, but it is somewhat uneven. I wish I cared more for the characters, they are somewhat one dimensional. However, Takashi is always interesting as a film maker, so I do recommend it, but he has done better. Its strange in its approach, a black comedy if you will. Once you understand it, you can watch it. Be warned, though, its a little out there.

Miike Takashi's `Katakuri-ke no Koufuku' is a wonderfully bizarre black comedy musical highly reminiscent of the music videos and live concert performances staged by the now-defunct 80s & 90's J-pop powerhouse Kome Kome Club. Miike's choice of Sawada Kenji as Katakuri Masao further accentuates this similarity, since he strongly resembles K2C co-front man `Carl Smoky' Ishii Tatsuya. The somewhat unpolished song & dance routines (unlike K2C), along with episodic fits of overacting and self-depreciating man-on-a-wire work combine to create a totally off the wall mix of dark humour and Miike's trademark visual gross-outs.

In synopsis, Katakuri Masao is a downsized urbanite who stakes his family's livelihood on restoring a run-down country inn. Masao, along with wife Terue (Matsuzaka Keiko) and father Jinpei (Tamba Tetsuro) reel in their troubled son Masayuki (Takeda Shinji) and divorced daughter Shizue (Nishida Naomi) to create their family dream. But alas, location is everything, and without a major road nearby, the `White Lover's Inn' waits patiently sans customers. When guests finally do begin to arrive, the Katakuris find (through no fault of their own) that their guests have an annoying habit of dying. Not to be discouraged however, the Katakuris do their best to persevere as a family, and find time for a number of offbeat musical numbers in between.

The most irritating character was the second-rate con man Richard Sawada played by actor/singer Iwamano Kiyoshiro, who also played a deadbeat suitor in the TBS dorama, "Boku no Shusshoku". He actually does a fair job at speaking bad gaijin-sounding Japanese, and he's one of the only actors in the movie (to my knowledge) with a musical background. Oh, and the shot with him wearing the Oakley `OverTheTops' is pretty funny. One of the strangest elements to me (besides the opening claymation sequence) was the fact that the prologue & epilogue narratives were voiced in retrospect by the young grand daughter, for no apparent reason. Some reviewers point out the moralistic undertones of family values and such, but I suspect that even this was thrown in by Miike as part of a cold-cocked slap in the face with regards to anything being morally relevant in the film, or making sense for that matter.

Okay, I don't have the best taste in movies, but when I read the synopsis, I have to admit, I was unhealthily curious. My boyfriend walked out from this movie, but I had to stay to finish it. What would happen to Shizue and the rest of the nutty Katakuris?! I've never seen such an odd film, and with my taste in movies that's saying a lot. Some of my favorites involve anything by Stephen Chow, Rocky Horror, Hedwig, and even blockbusters, like Batman Begins, Dark City, and HitchHiker's Guide. This movie was hilarious. I found it in the horror section of Blockbuster but it should have been placed in the comedy section. At the beginning I thought it was going to be awful but when great-grandpa hit the crow with a chunk of wood, I knew it was going to be awesome. The songs are cheesy and goodhearted and I bet the actors had a blast making this movie. 8 out of 10 from me because it was, straight face here, the Weirdest movie ever. :)

Please excuse me while I take my jaw off the floor... Whew! Okay, so Miike's movies are always full of genre-busting surprises, and I should have known what to expect with 'The Happiness Of The Katakuris', but NOTHING could have prepared me for what a nutty movie experience this is! A feel-good cheesy musical full of claymation and some singing and dancing zombies?!! I loved every minute of it! The actors playing the Katakuris were all good, but Kiyoshiro Imawano stole every scene he was in. He played "Richard Sagawa" the charming conman who romances Shizue. As soon as he broke into song I was laughing hysterically! If you are looking for something unusual then head straight for the Katakuris! I highly recommend this highly original and entertaining movie.

When I bought "The Happiness of the Katakuris" from Amazon it was under the impression that it was a musical with zombies, plus it is a Takashi Miike movie, two good things combined, or so it would appear.

First of all, you had to wait 76 minutes into the movie before the zombies make their appearance, and then even so, you see them for less than 5 minutes. So don't acquire this movie under the impression that it is a zombie musical, which I did. You will be sorely disappointed.

I do enjoy Takashi Miike's work and have most of it on DVD, this however, I will say it not amongst his best work. Sure the movie in itself was entertaining enough, it had a perverse dark comical touch to it, which is one of Takashi Miike's trademarks. But the movie was fairly slowly moving with very little actually happening, which in my opinion weighed the movie down.

Also, the DVD cover has 'the hills are alive with the sound of screaming!' boasted on the front cover. Yeah, that was false advertising of a grand scale. And on the back of the cover it boasted 'The Sound of Music meets Dawn of the Dead" ... yeah, right!

The story itself was entertaining, especially since all those people tragically died at the family's guest-house, which was kind of strange and coincidental. And the family itself was quite interesting and weird at the same time. The characters in the movie were nicely portrayed and had lots of depths to them, which really worked in favor of the movie. And the make-up of the zombies was actually quite good, I enjoyed that quite a lot, even though it was less than 5 minutes of screen time.

If you enjoy Asian musicals, then "The Happiness of the Katakuris" is perhaps a great choice for you, personally, I enjoyed the Korean musical "The Fox Family" a lot more than I did this movie. But hey, it is all a matter of preference.