Up-and-coming pickle-factory executive Mr. Tamura
is sweating out a deal to package kimchi for a South Korean company when he
gets some terrible news: his girlfriend has been murdered, and he's the prime
suspect. For Tamura, who's obsessed with fitting in, this accusation is
disastrous. Still, he does have a tendency to fly into blind rages. Also, he's
a giant koala.
Over the last four years, Japanese director Minoru
Kawasaki has directed more than a dozen films: some short, some feature-length,
and a sizable percentage of them fantastical comedies about human-sized animals
co-existing with the general population. Executive Koala is the most highly
regarded of the bunch, and with good reason. While funny in the "boy, that's
odd" sense more than the "laugh 'til you ache" sense, the film is fast-paced
and freewheeling, mixing in martial arts, a musical interlude, plot twists
galore, and a few pointed comments on Japanese xenophobia. It's easily the most
entertaining, imaginative movie ever made about a murderous marsupial in a
business suit.
The two other films in Synapse's "The Minoru
Kawasaki Collection" (each available separately) offer a similar mix of corny
synthesized music, broad acting, intentionally fakey effects, and slapdash
social messages. But only one of the two is as lively as Executive Koala. The disaster-movie
parody The World Sinks Except Japan (a riff on the unseen-in-America blockbuster Japan
Sinks)
imagines how Japan would handle an influx of wealthy foreigners fleeing their
submerged countries, and though it's fairly corrosive at times, the low budget
and wider scope don't mesh well, making it a chore to watch. The police-show
spoof Rug Cop
fares far better, because Kawasaki keeps the running time short, and because he
surrounds his hero—a balding detective who curtails criminals by flinging
his deadly toupee—with a supporting cast that includes a nerdy cop who
sports an enormous lightsaber erection, a chubby cop who emits lethal
flopsweat, and a handsome cop who elicits confessions with his power of
handsomeness. Throw in a musical montage featuring lyrics like "When a man
wears a rug / He hides his head," and you have classic Kawasaki. This is a
director who makes movies designed to leave audiences saying, "I watched the weirdest
thing last night."
Key features: Extensive
behind-the-scenes footage on each.