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MovieMail's Review
Films have genres. The Happiness of the Katakuris fits neatly into the Musical/live-action/zombie/animation/comedy section. The film is at one moment a pastiche of 'Night of the Living Dead' the next an elegant parody of 'The Sound of Music'.
Beginning with a five minute sequence of live action mixed with claymation: a girl in a restaurant finds a small creature in her soup, she screams and the creature bites off her uvula and flies away. In typical Miike fashion this has nothing to do with the rest of the story, just another example of the director’s endless pool of twisted animation.
The main plot concerns a Japanese family who open a guesthouse in the mountains. After the first customer commits suicide using his room key the family decide to bury him, in case the story damages the hotels reputation. When other guests also start to die the family all pitch in and grab the shovels.
The songs parody a variety of styles from romantic ballads to full-blown Rodgers and Hammerstein production numbers, even flashy karaoke songs with sing-a-long on screen lyrics. 'Happiness' is a warm hearted deeply black comedy about sacrifice, support and four generations of family togetherness in the face of mounting corpses. It will leave you with a song in your heart, and a knife in your back!
An utterly odd mixture of live action, musical and claymation as the Katakuris take on a guest house in the mountains. Uniquely strange and very funny!
