Koara kachô

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!!

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).

The idea of putting an actor in a furry koala suit in a movie and giving him the lead role does sound appealing. However, the lack of serious direction really ruins the idea. This is a mystery/ psychological thriller themes movie. But is also tried to include elements like martial arts/ kung fu, humor and light hearted musical, etc. It made the movie loses it's focus and audience like me will be more confused than entertained. Some of the elements like the killer traveling on off screen were too repetitive. It might be a cool effect for the first and second time but doing the same thing a couple of scenes and repeats at least 2 times per scene really worn out the effect. I always won't understand why Japanese movies often lack the seriousness. It's like the writer can't come up with a complete story for a good idea he had. There's interested characters (actors in animal suits)like the Koala, the bunny , the convenient store frog, etc. None of them were able to stand out because the lack of energy the scripts has for the characters.

I don't really like the movie and I can't think of a reason to recommend it to anyone. I see it as a failed attempt for making a horror/comedy movie.

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.