Koara kachô

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).

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.

OK this is probably not a movie everybody will enjoy. But I did. I loved Calamari Wrestler and I loved Excecutive Koala even more. The simple idea of having an animal in the lead role (and a few supporting roles) works sooo good. I won't reveal the plot here, but what I really loved about this movie, apart for the animal costumes, is all it different settings and themes - mixed with lame humor and animal suits. This is a comedy. But it also a prison movie, a slasher-flick, a musical, a love story, a drama and a Kung-Fu movie. It seems like the director wanted to incorporate as many different genres and settings in this movie in case he never gets to make another movie again (I hope he does). The result is that you never get bored when watching Executive Koala. It's a low-budget flick with ambitions like a Spielberg movie - The end product is hilarious and awesome. Sure the movie is lame - very lame, but in a good way, which can only make you love it!!

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.

Minoru Kawasaki is a director who has made a career out of making insanely awful films. Now I am not talking about awful like an Ed Wood film, but awful because the plot ideas are completely insane to begin with and cannot be anything other than awful. But there are many of us who LOVE insanely awful films because they can be absolutely hilarious and that's why the film Executive Koala is another addition to my"you ain't seen nothing' yet" series.

The film is about a hardworking and dedicated executive in Japan named Keiichi. He's an important man in his company, the envy of his co-workers and women think he's incredibly sexy. There's only one problem....he's a giant koala!!! Throughout this entire movie Keiichi is played by some guy in a big koala suit...but he's not all. There also are, for no reason whatsoever, a boss who's a giant white bunny and a guy who works in the local convenience store who is a frog...and all the rest of the characters are humans. And, I should point out, this is NOT a cartoon!! Does it sound 100% insane? Yep...because it is!!

Unfortunately for nice-guy Keiichi, soon his girlfriend is found dead--stabbed to death by some maniac! And, with Keiichi's old wife missing for three years!! The police naturally think this marsupial is responsible and after a while Keiichi himself starts to wonder if perhaps he is as well. Is he a serial killing maniac or is this some elaborate plot being organized by forces of evil?! See the film and find out for yourself....if you dare!!

If you think that this could be a good film or makes any sense. you are wrong. The film simply never tries to be coherent. The story is punctuated with bizarre and bloody dream sequences, there is also a hand puppet (Momo, the flying squirrel) and an ending that only would make sense if you are under the influence of LSD or have had a recent severe head injury. But, oddly, I liked it. The film has a wonderfully silly and wicked sense of humor and is also a lot of fun. However, people who like conventional films need not bother-- you really have to have a willingness to just turn off your brain and enjoy!

For lovers of weirdness, I'd give this one a 9. For 'normals', I'd say a 1...at best.