Rating: 15/20
Plot: I don't know. I think there's an alien invasion that leads to dancing. No, that doesn't sound right. "I don't know" seems a lot more accurate.
I certainly didn't think I was enjoying this behemoth of a movie--two-and-a-half hours of random insanity. There was choppiness, a pair of neo-and-Japanese Laurel and Hardy guys who kept popping in and out, dialogue that was so boring and pointless that I had trouble keeping my eyes open to read the subtitles, and some of what I'd refer to as mild weirdness. And then came So-and-So's dream, a sequence that involves a weird shirtless dancing demon, automatic weaponry, some red space-suited goggle girls, a big-breasted pink cartoon alien thing, a seaweed-covered Volkswagon, and a whole lot of sweet dance moves. Then, it calmed down again with a few more episodes in this episodic mind-warper, gave me a break with an intermission, and then threw "Wanna Go for a Drink?" at me, a segment that involved The Shorty Trio!, navel invasion, a yellow-furred man, rump-shaking, and the birthing of a tiny chef. Well, perhaps a picture would put this in your mind a little better:
Only there's no little chef yet because he comes from that television-looking thing. And I know you're looking at that picture, maybe for a third time, and thinking to yourself, "Yeah, but that's probably the only part of the movie that's worth watching." But you're wrong! Because there's also this:
That! There are a few sequences with these fleshy things that look like that might have been pulled straight from the pages of a William S. Burroughs book. One of my favorite scenes is "Youth Classroom" where some kids play these sorts of things as instruments. Oh, and you know what? The movie also has this:
That! Which I'm sure is making you wonder why I'm only giving this movie a 15/20 because any movie with that has to be one of the greatest movies ever made. Add that to the fact that this will likely win both my Dance Moves of the Year competition in my end-of-the-year blog post (a dance at a singles picnic that I would have watched twice had this movie not been two-and-a-half hours long--that scene also uses one of my favorite phrases--"Sausage fest.") and quite possibly my favorite musical moment of the year in what I can only assume is the titular funky forest, a piece that's got dueling synthesizers and violin throat singing. Stunning stuff. This is a sloppy movie that bored me in chunks and thrilled me in others. I also felt like I was missing out on a lot of satirical content or something because I'm not from Japan. Still, I liked enough of this to be really glad I stuck with it.
This movie contains Snickers product placement.
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