The Happiness of the Katakuris (2002)

Takashi Miike is a goddamn workhorse -- the man seriously directs six or seven films a year. It's inhuman that he can maintain the level of invention that he does, but if anything his imagination just gets more prodigious and more delirious with each passing year. Take this film as an example: it's a hyper, freewheeling comedy about a family determined to set up a sucessful guest house that includes several dead bodies, a few Claymation interludes, gratuitous violence against birds and one of the most improbable homages to The Sound of Music since Dario Argento tacked on an extra ending to Opera. Oh yeah -- and it's a musical. Cheerfully demented seems to be the watchword here. And as aggressively uneven as it can be (with so many ideas to burn, the film starts to feel like one damn thing after another), when it works it's one of the most joyfully entertaining things you're ever likely to witness.

Grade: B