i’m a big miike fan and almost an apologist, and this is definitely lesser miike. like white collar worker kintaro it’s a terrible formulaic script that he pushes over the edge so you have to get campy joy out of it. there’s a lot of ridiculous stuff, like the super-cool cop who i had no idea what was doing or why, all of sho aikawa’s reactions, the kid, everything. but none of it did it for me until the end - which is a mirror of kintaro too. why is the validation from the young boy always the most important? anyways, my favorite moment - when the mother goes from solemn one second to screaming “ZEBRAMAAAAAN!!” like he’s a beatle the next. i got some serious giggles and it pretty much made the movie for me.
i like that miike makes so many movies and has no regard for ‘quality’ but i think he should stay consistent within each one. here i think it was a mistake to shoe-horn in the family breakdown stuff that didn’t really go anywhere. the movie was 20 minutes too long anyway.
