Koara kachô

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.

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.

I have no idea why people say ''Executive Koala'' is hard to understand. Almost everything is explained, bluntly, and the story is pretty linear. Aside from being unfinished, this movie is pretty simple.

Described as a ''psychological thriller wrapped up in the packaging of a nonsense comedy--with giant animal characters'', I expected this to be humorous, at least slightly. No. ''Executive Koala'' wasn't even humorous accidentally! (Well, I guess if you find ax murder hilarious it could be.)

So it's not funny. But this is supposed to be a convoluted storyline that (in the words of one reviewer) ''...changes direction frequently, especially in the thirrd act, when the plot changes several times...''. Sorry, it fails there too.

I found the plot very linear, the story unfinished, and the movie fairly...simple. There are no ''plot twists and turns'', nothing ''funny'', and definitely nothing nonsensical.

In the end,''Executive Koala'' isn't a total waste of time, it's just EXTREMELY misrepresented by its advertising.

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.

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.