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Happiness of the Katakuris (2002)
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Reviews Counted: 27
Fresh: 18
Rotten:9
Average Rating: 6.3/10
Consensus: If nothing else, Happiness of the Katakuris scores points for its delirious, over-the-top originality.
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Synopsis: Best known for his dark splatterfests (AUDITION, ICHI THE KILLER), director Takeshi Miike takes a detour from his usual style with HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS. After losing his job at a department... Best known for his dark splatterfests (AUDITION, ICHI THE KILLER), director Takeshi Miike takes a detour from his usual style with HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS. After losing his job at a department store, patriarch Masao (Kenji Sawada) has opened a country inn at which the whole family can work. The trouble is, whenever someone checks in, they seem to die before checking out! The inn spells a different adventure for each member of the family, and Miike somehow finds the ability to work in some surreal clay animation along with several elaborate karaoke-style musical numbers. KATAKURIS is a one-of-a-kind film which will certainly deliver the goods to adventurous cinephiles! [More]
Starring: Kenji Sawada, Naomi Nishida, Keiko Matsuzaka, Shinji Takeda
Starring: Kenji Sawada, Naomi Nishida, Keiko Matsuzaka, Shinji Takeda, Naoto Takenaka
Director: Takashi Miike
Director: Takashi Miike
Screenwriter: Kikumi Yamagishi
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Reviews for Happiness of the Katakuris
Love it or hate it, such a feat of highly demented cinematic imagination simply must be seen.
The Katakuris may not be your typical innkeepers, but the family that sings together and buries dead bodies together, stays together...this is hilarious, macabre, and entertaining.
It's shot and acted in a way that's hastily, amateurishly theatrical, through digital photography that tries to look beautiful but just plain can't.
...for all the black humor of this deliriously bizarre fantasy Happiness is a warmhearted film about sacrifice, support and four generations of family togetherness in face of mounting corpses.
It's freakishly interesting and even outright hilarious at times, but, then again, so are most funerals.
By the second hour, Miike's story fails to punctuate its powerful setup, and the work, much like the family itself, ends up a tangled mess.
There are so many moments in Happiness of the Katakuris that beg us to walk out on the movie, it's hard to pick just one.
An amusing scenario, until even Miike seems to lose his taste for the oddly sweet concoction and allows the film to drift aimlessly to a rainbow-hued finale.
It's a ball when it works, which is why fans of Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, Francois Ozon's 8 Women, and other darkly inspired, genre-bending musical fusions must introduce themselves to the Katakuris.
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