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Happiness Of The Katakuris [2003]


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Weak effort by Miike
Review date: 2008-08-19 Rating: 4 out of 10

Takashi Miike is known for having made zillions of movies: he films several movies a year, almost all genre films. As a result, he has developed quite a cult reputation. I have seen only two of his films - Audition (probably his most famous film, and one I found to be thoroughly repulsive) and this one. I found Katakuris to be a mixed bag: this combination of a musical with a terror flick - with "The Sound of Music" added just for the heck of it - just doesn't work very well. If it sounds like a bad mix, it is. There are only a few redeeming features that makes it worth watching - two musical numbers, in particular - one at the end, and the other at the middle called In Love. The other redeeming feature is the presence of Naomi Nishida, an actress I found fascinating since I saw her in My Secret Cache some years ago. She was also in Godzilla 2000, and has a very small role in Swing Girls.

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With my family, I know I'll grow up to be really cool
Review date: 2008-08-18 Rating: 10 out of 10


A woman is eating soup when she finds a strange object in her soup -- a curly-headed pixie who becomes enamored of her uvula and steals it. Thus begins a weird claymation sequence involving ghastly rag dolls, snakes, killer crows, and more pixies.

This one scene alone tells you just what kind of movie "The Happiness of the Katakuris" is, and whether you're going to like it. Takashi Miike -- well known for gruesome action movies -- is pretty obviously having a ball as he tells the colorful, chaotic story of a singing family and the people who have the misfortune to visit their hotel. Zombies, random musical numbers, and family strife are all here in abundance.

The Katakuri family is made up of four generations of family, criminal activity, and general hopelessness -- the only one currently immune is the little granddaughter.

And things are not improved when the head of the family Masao (Kenji Sawada) is laid off from his job. So he purchases a remote hotel, after being told that a major road is going to be run nearby. But nobody checks in until one rainy night, when a strange man appears -- and then stabs himself on a sharpened keychain. Cue the Japanese techno and dance number!

Terrified that the suicide will ruin their reputation, the Katakuris surreptitiously bury the man in the woods -- only to have more guests die in bizarre ways, and end up buried in the woods. Oh yeah, and Shizue's (Naomi Nishida) new boyfriend is a criminal. As a typhoon approaches and their secret burials are threatened with discovery, can this family of failures pull it together -- or will everything blow up in their faces?

I have to say that Takashi Miike -- famous for the graphic and horrific "Ichi the Killer" -- is not the first person I'd have chosen for a black-comedy/musical about a family running an ill-fated hotel. Especially since I have a special fondness for the Korean movie it remakes, "The Quiet Family." But Miike's work on this is nothing short of brilliant -- a comedy of increasingly grotesque errors, leading up to a literally explosive finale.

A lot of its charm is that Miike does not let his style be constrained by logic -- there are wild random musical numbers, claymation interludes, disco balls, wacky spiritualists, and a flying conman who claims to be the Queen's secret nephew ("Diana! If only I was there!"). He shows no restraint at all, even climaxing the film in a crazy scene where the fear-addled Katakuris -- who are trying to re-bury those troublesome corpses -- do a carefree song-and-dance scene with a bunch of zombies. It has to be seen to be believed.

And it's really funny too. While the plot starts at a rather relaxed pace (excluding the uvula-stealing pixies), Miike cranks up the absurdity with plenty of lowbrow humor (a sumo wrestler dies during sex, and crushes his girlfriend), gore, and a general feeling of surreality. Things just get more hysterical and desperate for the poor Katakuris, and Miike never gives them a break ("Maybe we should prepare for the worst," one of them says when a guest solemnly requests some cord).

Surprisingly for a black comedy, the characters are rather likable, if pathetic -- the dad and mom are just trying to keep the hotel afloat while proclaiming love to each other. Tetsuro Tamba's lovable old grandpa is just trying to keep his family safe when he isn't killing crows and assaulting suitors. Nishida is also quite good as an eternally desperate divorcee, who is almost superhumanly gullible when it comes to men.

"The Happiness of the Katakuris" is a perfect example of a black comedy -- warped, wild, wacky, and full of clay pixies and singing zombies. Now if only somebody could get Peter Jackson to remake this puppy...

Quick Reviews!
Review date: 2007-12-15 Rating: 8 out of 10

Miike does it again, further proving that he his currently the best director in the world, and that Asia is, and has for the last 5 years been making the best films. Again the main theme of the film is family, as we watch the Katakuri family, four generations and a dog, struggling to start a new life in the countryside by opening a Hotel/Inn. The tone and content of the film is lighter than many of the recent films he has gained Western recognition for, such as Audition, but his trademark weirdness, violence and wonderful originality is all here. Each family member is different and has their own strengths and weaknesses-Great Grandpa hates crows, Grandpa is losing faith in his business and cannot trust his son who is a former thief, Grandma tries to keep the family together and mother will fall in love to easily. Her daughter tells the story, and is largely a solitary figure. Then people start to die.

A guest kills himself, the family cover it up, and Mother falls in love with a psycho. Later, more guests die, and the psycho comes back leading to a police chase, animated mountain side fight, zombie dancers and several musical numbers. Then the Volcano erupts. The use of animation is excellent, the songs are short and catchy, and the story is interesting. There are lots of funny moments, the kinds of moments Hollywood, or anywhere else just cannot give, and every performance is brilliant. Plus the film looks gorgeous as well. Another great film form Takashi Miike, if you take the time to explore his movies, he deserves your praise. Whether he cares about Western recognition is another matter. The last thing to say is that he makes better films than anyone else at the moment. Hollywood director's make 1 movie every four years, quality average. Takashi- 5 films a year, almost all excellent.

The DVD has trailers, interviews, and thankfully a very good making of. More Tartan DVDs should be like this, as the best movies at the moment are coming from Asia at the moment and it would be good to know more about the cast, and making process.

The hills are alive with the sound of laughter.
Review date: 2007-10-22 Rating: 10 out of 10

The Happiness of the Katakuris is probably Takashi Miike's strangest film (or at least, stranger than any of the others that I've seen so far; which is quite an accomplishment when you consider that some of those films include the equally bizarre delights of Gozu, Dead or Alive, Ichi the Killer and Visitor Q). Where The Happiness of the Katakuris exceeds the strangeness of those particular films is in the not so subtle blending of genres, styles and influences; making reference to and pastiche of everything from Japanese television and post-war family melodrama, to Hollywood musicals and zombie exploitation.

The overall result is like a kind of giddy burst of merry, kaleidoscopic excess; as sounds, sights, colours and textures all blend amidst the barrage of stop-motion horror, live action character development and scenes of Technicolor, all-singing/all-dancing delirium! The basic plot was loosely inspired by an earlier Korean film called The Quiet Family - the first film from Kim-Ji Woon, director of A Tale of Two Sisters and A Bittersweet Life - which was more of a straight horror/comedy story about a typical nuclear family that set up a hunting lodge in the countryside, only to find that their first wave of clients are dying off one by one in mysterious circumstances. Miike transports the action to rural Japan and spins a yarn of staggering imagination; adding broader strokes of slap-stick humour, campy musical numbers and a colourful zombie pastiche.

Still, don't come to this expecting a horror film or something that continues the brutality of Ichi the Killer or Agitator (two other films that Miike directed alongside this in 2001); The Happiness of the Katakuris is a comedy at its most satirical and absurd; using the frame-work of the story to look at the backgrounds of three generations of Japanese men and the women that support them, and tying it all into a subtle reference about Japanese culture, from the post war to the present. And even if you chose to ignore the more satirical angle presented in both the humour and the narrative design there's still so much left to enjoy; with the constant barrage of sight gags and colourful musical numbers erupting from the seemingly calm veneer of a "normal" family life.

For me, Miike is a genius filmmaker, and The Happiness of the Katakuris is easily one of his must-see works! From the Buñuel-ian tinged opening that descends into a sequence of stop-motion animation that introduces us to both the themes and story of the film we're about to see, to the grand finalé which moves spasmodically from musical, to farce, to high tension; before eventually ending on a dual moment of tragedy and jubilation. The performances throughout are superb, with each member of the family feeling like a proper three-dimensional character that we can really relate to and believe in. It's also worth pointing out that for a director with a reputation as brutal and offensive as Miike's this is the second film he made in the year 2001 alone in which the ultimate point of the film was the importance of family and tradition (the other being the similarly brilliant and outlandish satire, Visitor Q).

The Happiness of the Katakuris is masterpiece film for me; inventive, irreverent but also filled with empathy and compassion. I'd place it on the list of essential films by Takashi Miike, with some of the others being the well-known likes of Audition, Gozu and Visitor Q, but also more understated works like The Bird People in China, The Great Yokai War and Shinjuku Triad Society. A must have for anyone with an interest in original, intelligent and highly imaginative filmmaking!

Could of been so much better.
Review date: 2007-10-18 Rating: 4 out of 10

The premise of the film was so good. A family who invest everything in a rural hotel, but when they do eventualy get some guests they all decease in one way or another. If they^d played it straight as a black comedy it could of been excellent. But it wasn^t. It was realy dissapointing. The singing and dancing slots, and ludicrus animation ruined it. And what a ridiculous end, (east africa in the back yard).

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Kiyoshiro Imawano
Shinji Takeda
Kenji Sawada
Naomi Nishida
Keiko Matsuzaka

Creators:
Kenji Sawada (Primary Contributor)
Keiko Matsuzaka (Primary Contributor)
Hideo Yamamoto (Cinematographer)
Yasushi Shimamura (Editor)
Hirotsugu Yoshida (Producer)
Ai Kennedy (Writer)
Kikumi Yamagishi (Writer)

Director(s):

Recording label: Tartan Video
Manufacturer: Tartan Video
EAN: 5023965443120
Binding: VHS Tape
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Subtitled, Widescreen,
Release date: 2003-09-29
Number of discs: 1
Audience rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Running time: 113 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2003-05-16
Language: Japanese (Original Language)

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