Tamura's just your average Japanese dude. He's an executive for a successful vegetable pickling concern, and despite his crippling shyness and lack of self-confidence, he's managed to spearhead a partnership between his firm and a South Korean kimchi manufacturer that promises to help his company boost its market share. His love life is looking up, too. His ex-wife disappeared three years ago, but he's moved on, even though he still loves her. He's dating this cute secretary in his office, who likes him even though her co-workers make fun of her for it. So it's kind of a bummer when she ends up murdered and everyone assumes he did it. Kind of makes for an awkward work environment.
There's one other thing about Tamura, but I don't know if I should even mention it. Honestly, I feel like some sort of racist for even bringing it up, because it's not like it really matters. So what if he's a six-foot koala bear? It's not important to who he is inside, you know? This is the age of Obama. We shouldn't judge people by the color of their skin or how much fur they have growing out of it.
So, yeah, that's what this movie's deal is. It's a deadpan comedy/thriller type thing where every now and again somebody is an anthropomorphic man-beast with a big plushy head like your high school football team's mascot. And nobody thinks that's weird. It's not like they don't notice it. Everyone is fully aware that Tamura is a koala and his boss is a bunny rabbit and the guy who runs the convenience store is a frog. They just don't bring it up, which makes sense. I mean, you wouldn't just walk up to a midget and be like, "Hey, so you're wicked short. How's that working out for you?" That would be rude, which the Japanese are more frightened of than just about anything besides giant nuclear lizards and tall white women. There's a pretty great shot where Tamura is walking down a crowded street, and it's pretty clear that the people around him aren't extras. Some of them do double takes when they see him, but most just keep their heads down and go about their business, secure in the knowledge that, if they had reason to be concerned about the dude with the huge, bulbous koala head in their midst, their superiors would surely let them know about it.
Executive Koala begins with an animated credits sequence like an old Pink Panther movie. Temura is shown in cartoon form, flying around in a business suit while his teeth-rottingly chipper theme song plays, explaining that little things like divorce and downsizing can't keep him down. It's sort of like the beginning of the Toonses the Driving Cat sketches on Saturday Night Live. Then we see him at work, trying to convince some skeptical human executives of the validity of his plan to merge with the kimchi company. The fact that he gesticulates a little too wildly to compensate for his mostly inexpressive animatronic stuffed animal head probably doesn't help his case, but they go for it anyway.
At this point, it's still funny to see a guy with a koala head wearing a business suit or making pillowtalk with his attractive ladyfriend, but that wears off pretty quickly and you start wondering what the fuck they were going for with this one. There is really no good reason why Temura should be a koala. It has nothing to do with the plot, and it's never explained why this world has humanoid animals walking around and assuming high-level corporate positions. The story would have remained exactly the same if he'd just been a regular human, only I probably wouldn't have watched it, because who the hell wants to see a movie where some boring peckerhead who's not a koala occasionally blacks out and goes into a blind rage and maybe killed his girlfriend and possibly his ex-wife? Without the koala, you got nothing.
From now on, this should be a viable option for all directors stuck with a not-all-that-interesting script. I'm pretty sure I would have gone to see Righteous Kill if Pacino and De Niro had been played by a mongoose and a sea lion, respectively.
Anyway, Executive Koala is admirably deadpan at the outset, letting you get used to this world where you can walk into a room and there's a big white bunny rabbit just sitting there, being real friendly and supportive despite his evil pink eyes. It does get weirder as it goes on, however. At one point, this Korean businessman opens his briefcase and a fluffy hand puppet jumps out, and Temura is like, "A giant flying squirrel!" And you're like, "Giant? Buddy, you're a six-foot koala." It brings up some bizarre questions about the zoological hierarchy of the world this movie takes place in. It's sort of like how Goofy is a person, even though he's a dog, but Pluto is just an animal.
The visual style also gets more surreal as the movie progresses. At the beginning, it's very flat and drab, with fluorescent lights washing out most of the color, but by the time it gets to the concluding kung-fu battle in front of a flashing neon ferris wheel, it turns into a full-on psychedelic light show. That's also when the movie gives up on trying to make sense and gives in to the ironic detachment it had valiantly fought off up until that point. In my Zombie Strippers review, I complained that the movie never took itself seriously enough to justify its existence, but Executive Koala treats its retarded premise with a commendably straight face right up until the final reel, when it reveals itself to be a big joke that doesn't amount to anything. Still, it's hard to complain when a movie's climax hinges around the idea that learning Korean martial arts allows you to self-resurrect at will. Makes me wish I hadn't wasted my time on those breakdancing lessons when I was a kid.
Showing posts with label animals with people jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animals with people jobs. Show all posts
Saturday, August 28, 2010
The Calamari Wrestler
I don’t know what it is with this dude Minoru Kawasaki, but he apparently can’t stop making movies about big rubber-headed talking animals with human jobs. Prior to making Executive Koala—a sort of black comic Eric Roberts movie with no tits but with a lot more anthropomorphic bunny rabbits—he made The Calamari Wrestler, the heartwarming story of a dude who transforms himself into a giant squid so he can be a better wrestler.
Both of these movies are admirably straight-faced in their approach to this surreal subject matter. They play their storylines more or less without irony, so you actually sort of care who killed Exec Koala’s wife and why Calamari Wrestler thought morphing into a cephalopod was the way to go. The joke in the former movie is that homeboy being a koala has nothing to do with anything. It would have been the exact same movie if he was just some dude with anger management issues, only it would be way less awesome. Calamari Wrestler is different in that the squid angle is crucial to the plot. A squid, you see, is impervious to most standard wrestling moves, since he has no joints to bend in the wrong direction. Plus, you can see how having six extra limbs would come in handy when it comes to ass-kicking. That’s why other wrestlers start turning themselves into sea creatures, so Calamari has to defend himself against an octopus and some kind of boxing crawfish. The whole time this is going on, Calamari also has to win back his ex-girlfriend (the sex scene is surprisingly chaste and romantic for the culture that invented tentacle porn) and deal with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Japanese Vince McMahon.
What I find interesting about this movie, though, is not the plot (which is really just a retread of every other inspirational sports movie from Rocky to Rad) or even the absurdity of watching a giant squid slam a giant octopus into the turnbuckle. You get used to that stuff pretty quickly, so you stop seeing Calamari as a visual joke and just see him as another character. What I find interesting is that the movie seems to be equating Japan’s love/hate relationship with monsters with their subconscious desire to break free from their culture’s pathological need for conformity. In the movie, the president of the Japanese pro wrestling federation claims that, after World War II, the flagging morale of the Japanese people was boosted by the exploits of a famous wrestling champion, whose victories became symbolic of Japan’s ability to overcome any obstacle. That’s why he wants to make Calamari throw the match against the human champion. (The fact that wrestling is always fixed is blissfully ignored.) He figures that the people will be incapable of seeing a squid wrestler as anything but a monster, a symbol of the troubles plaguing their nation, so their spirits will be lifted by seeing a normal man defeat it.
In reality, Japan’s morale was boosted after WWII not by professional wrestling, but by Godzilla. In the first Godzilla movie, he was the villain, a nuclear monstrosity that personified the destructive power of the atomic bomb and, by extension, America and the rest of the decadent West. However, a curious thing happened as the series progressed. Godzilla stopped being the villain and became the hero. He would still destroy Tokyo on a biweekly basis, but he would also defend it against other, even more destructive beasts, the thinking being that G-Zed might be a monster, but at least he’s our monster.
But what would make a hive-mentality culture like Japan champion a creature that not only never has any hope of fitting in but is quite literally out to destroy society itself? If that’s not clear evidence of a people secretly yearning to break free from normality and let their freak flag fly, I don’t know what is.
The same thing happens in The Calamari Wrestler. Rather than seeing the squid-man as a monster, they embrace him as their hero. That’s what boosts the people’s morale: not seeing a representative of the status quo defeat the monstrous anomaly, but celebrating that anomaly for the very things that make it different. In its quiet, absurd, only slightly pretentious way, The Calamari Wrestler makes the case for individuality in a society that has always openly feared and secretly respected it. I would say that getting a bunch of monks to transform you into a leotard-clad leviathan is probably pushing it, but the metaphor holds true nonetheless.
Both of these movies are admirably straight-faced in their approach to this surreal subject matter. They play their storylines more or less without irony, so you actually sort of care who killed Exec Koala’s wife and why Calamari Wrestler thought morphing into a cephalopod was the way to go. The joke in the former movie is that homeboy being a koala has nothing to do with anything. It would have been the exact same movie if he was just some dude with anger management issues, only it would be way less awesome. Calamari Wrestler is different in that the squid angle is crucial to the plot. A squid, you see, is impervious to most standard wrestling moves, since he has no joints to bend in the wrong direction. Plus, you can see how having six extra limbs would come in handy when it comes to ass-kicking. That’s why other wrestlers start turning themselves into sea creatures, so Calamari has to defend himself against an octopus and some kind of boxing crawfish. The whole time this is going on, Calamari also has to win back his ex-girlfriend (the sex scene is surprisingly chaste and romantic for the culture that invented tentacle porn) and deal with the behind-the-scenes machinations of the Japanese Vince McMahon.
What I find interesting about this movie, though, is not the plot (which is really just a retread of every other inspirational sports movie from Rocky to Rad) or even the absurdity of watching a giant squid slam a giant octopus into the turnbuckle. You get used to that stuff pretty quickly, so you stop seeing Calamari as a visual joke and just see him as another character. What I find interesting is that the movie seems to be equating Japan’s love/hate relationship with monsters with their subconscious desire to break free from their culture’s pathological need for conformity. In the movie, the president of the Japanese pro wrestling federation claims that, after World War II, the flagging morale of the Japanese people was boosted by the exploits of a famous wrestling champion, whose victories became symbolic of Japan’s ability to overcome any obstacle. That’s why he wants to make Calamari throw the match against the human champion. (The fact that wrestling is always fixed is blissfully ignored.) He figures that the people will be incapable of seeing a squid wrestler as anything but a monster, a symbol of the troubles plaguing their nation, so their spirits will be lifted by seeing a normal man defeat it.
In reality, Japan’s morale was boosted after WWII not by professional wrestling, but by Godzilla. In the first Godzilla movie, he was the villain, a nuclear monstrosity that personified the destructive power of the atomic bomb and, by extension, America and the rest of the decadent West. However, a curious thing happened as the series progressed. Godzilla stopped being the villain and became the hero. He would still destroy Tokyo on a biweekly basis, but he would also defend it against other, even more destructive beasts, the thinking being that G-Zed might be a monster, but at least he’s our monster.
But what would make a hive-mentality culture like Japan champion a creature that not only never has any hope of fitting in but is quite literally out to destroy society itself? If that’s not clear evidence of a people secretly yearning to break free from normality and let their freak flag fly, I don’t know what is.
The same thing happens in The Calamari Wrestler. Rather than seeing the squid-man as a monster, they embrace him as their hero. That’s what boosts the people’s morale: not seeing a representative of the status quo defeat the monstrous anomaly, but celebrating that anomaly for the very things that make it different. In its quiet, absurd, only slightly pretentious way, The Calamari Wrestler makes the case for individuality in a society that has always openly feared and secretly respected it. I would say that getting a bunch of monks to transform you into a leotard-clad leviathan is probably pushing it, but the metaphor holds true nonetheless.
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