CommentsXp
Best movie ever!
Intcatinfo
A Masterpiece!
Neive Bellamy
Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
Joseph Sylvers
I hear the phrase "weirdest movie I've ever seen" quite allot, and most of the time I take it with a grain of salt. After all what is strange to one, may become dull as dishwater to another. Few times have I understood or cared to understand what I was watching less than during Funky Forest: The First Contact. I looked into this movie after having had my heart warmed by The Taste of Tea, and its blend of the quirky and surreal images with saccharine sentimentality. Funky Forest has no sentiments, it is a series of free associative episodes, the flow like the sketches in Monty Python's And Now for Something Completely Different, and only where the Pythons were compiling a best of, FF is creating a TV show from another universe far beyond ours. Some of the episodes are deadpan and some just awkward, a few last only a matter of seconds while others seem like repeat characters you would find on SNL; there are the mole brothers a band of idiotic vaudeville style hosts who hurl insults at each other and are all but incomprehensible. Then there's the equally dull if less annoying "Unpopular With Women Brothers" also known as Guitar Brother, where a man with long hair sings to a fat little white boy of around 10 (referred to as his brother) and asks him what he thinks to which he's usually insulted.The film does pick up at about the 35 minute mark when we are introduced all too briefly to The Babbling Health Spa Vixens, three women at a health spa discussing topics like UFO's and shy men, giggling, and enjoying a hot tub. The other highlights include two teenage platonic friends fantasizing of each other in elaborate dream sequences that combine some of the strangest electronic sound collage music to ever be emitted from a car covered in seaweed on a beach by alien children with some dance numbers that brought the theatricality of Tsai Ming Liang to mind. The film is divided into an A side and a B side, with a three minute intermission and later a ten second intermission dividing them like a mix tape you might play in your own sea weed car. Side B is much stronger than side A because it introduced "Homeroom"(perhaps my favorite segment), as well as several more involving alien creatures straight off the set from some David Cronenberg wet dream. Alien creatures used as musical props, used as training in some kind of lactating tennis game, or to generate miniature blood sucking men. I could tell you why but as we see in one scene when a young girl meets a man in a furry yellow suit with a long tail protruding from his crotch, it would take 3 hours and 10 minutes to fully explain what was going on, and even then we might still be lost. Broken into pieces I could see this film scattered across some kind of "Adult Swim" like Japanese late night show, or making the viral rounds as artful YouTube clips. Altogether as one entity it's a chimera of sketches half-clever, half-hilarious, half-repulsive, half-dull, and half-refreshing. I know that's 5 half's but a film like Funky Forrest, can pull a five assed baboon out of a baby carriage and then go out for Ice Cream without a batting a lash, so it just feels right. Frustrating but ultimately worthwhile viewing, might have made it into my immediate favorites if not for the lackluster gags in "The Mole Brothers" and "Guitar Brother's" segments. Intergalactic Girl DJ Group of the Dream-world known as "The Volume" were almost enough to save the poorer parts, as they collectively hold the power over all sounds of living beings, sounds of nature, and sounds of human technology, and use them to lay down what else, but a funky beat in the forest.Similar to films by Roy Anderson and Luis Bunuel, Funky Forest distinguishes itself from being neither lyrical and poetic as the former nor as absurdist and satirical as the latter, it's a guttural vomiting of images and thoughts surreal in the automatic writing sense of the word that Andre Breton championed to a fault. The fault still remains here, in the fragmented and emotionally vacant episodes (with the exception of the first dance number which is as close to sentiment and logic as the film is willing to flirt with). Directed by Katsuhito Ishii, Hajime Ishimine, and Shinichiro Miki the film is obviously a labor of love (if not other more mind altering states) by a group whose been friends apparently since college, and they are clearly unconcerned with whether a wider audience will be interested in their in-jokes (as if Mole Brothers has been around for years), perhaps blissfully so.If you like strange sci-fi body horror as humor, jokes about guys who can't get dates but who can dance like the wind, recurring nightmares about school, violins which sound like didgeridoo's, and all the non sequitters that can be squeezed into 2 and half hours this for you. Basically Funky Forrest is like watching a late night surrealist (completely illogical) Japanese variety made in a future when aliens (Piko-Riko?) live among us as objects and mutations and dream spirits, and I could go on, but it would take me 3 hours
ekeby
If you've read the other reviews here (and elsewhere), you get the idea. It's a combination of loosely connected segments that are funny, surreal, and nonsensical. But, of course, it's much more than that, despite any of the directors' assertions that it's a meaningless bit of fun.So if it's not meaningless, what is it? I think the clue is in the title. My dictionary says funky means 1) strong musical rhythm, 2) modern and stylish in an unconventional way, and 3) strongly musty. That would describe this forest, though it's important to remember that you can't always see the forest for the trees. (For non-English speakers, "can't see the forest for the trees" is an aphorism meaning you don't always realize you are in a forest because there are so many individual trees to look at. Or something like that.)In this case, the Funky Forest is our culture, particularly our cinematic and pop culture. I'm American and this movie is Japanese, so for me, the pop culture references were mostly inaccessible. I recognized a lot of stylistic content from Japanese TV and cartoons, but I had the feeling the movie would have had much more depth for me if I'd grown up Japanese.However, the cinema references are more easily grasped; the work of several film directors sprung to mind as I watched this. At the top of the list, I'd put David Lynch, for serious-looking, slightly surreal scenes with absurd dialog. The creatures in Forest suggested more Lynch than Cronenberg to me. Tarentino's mixed-up, episodic, circular story-telling is used. Speaking of circular-story telling, there is a funny comment on Rashomon too.Fellini. Not for unusual-looking people, because there isn't much of that. But because he also took bits of dialog that could have been or were actually from real life and put them into contexts that made them seem absurd if not incomprehensible. The visuals of Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's first color film, came to mind. And, I noticed, as with Fellini's 8- 1/2, Funky Forest only makes sense by being self-referential. What makes Funky Forest somewhat unique is the way it explodes familiar if not clichéd movie scenes. Dialog that starts off mundane can soon become absurdly confrontational, often by one character focusing on some bit of minutia that, if the rules of social convention were followed, should have been overlooked or ignored. Happily for us, social convention is thrown out the window here, with wonderfully silly results.I have no doubt that in future this film will be the subject of more than one Phd thesis. And the analysis will probably be fascinating. In the meantime, it really isn't necessary to understand what's going on to appreciate this movie. In fact, I think that's the point. In reverse. If you don't understand what's going on, you may not have a good time.Me, I enjoyed this film enormously, and I'd love to own the soundtrack.
cj_haxholm
i went to see this film without having the slightest clue about it....and at first i was quite disappointed; some not very inspiring animations...but then,slowly it all grew, to be more and more crazy and unbelievable, and things accelerated a whole lot...then it appears to be commercials within each other, gags, comedy shows, circus, small short stories and in a way they have nothing to do with each other and yet they make this incredible organic of well-composed-complex movie!so a mix with low graphics (and high), fake commercials, beautiful scenes of landscapes and things like that...wow! so all in all the the best parts of Japanese experimental films + all the best from the(Japanese) pop culture...blend it, shake it...and voilà!I was very glad i saw this movie! really!
Gerard Elmore
I saw this film at the world premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival.I can honestly say it was the best cinematic experience I have ever had. It is so wild, so creative, and filled to the brim with amazing goofiness. Two of the directors were on hand and all I could do was praise them. Before the movie they said the movie isn't suppose to have a point. It's meant to be an experience and to put a goofy grin on your face. That's exactly what happened, I had an experience. Laughed and grinned through the whole thing.I was a little confused when there was a intermission, thought it was another joke, but when I saw the directors leave for a quick bathroom break, I knew it was real.Most of the audiences I watched it with (I saw it twice) absolutely loved the film...although there were a few who could not handle it and had to leave...But personally, I thought it was brilliant!
