Funky Forest: The First Contact (Nice no Mori) review

I didn’t go into Funky Forest: The First Contact with any preconceived notions about what it would be. Consequently I spent the first 45 minutes or so completely befuddled by its drastic, seemingly random scene changes and unmitigated insanity. At first I was taken aback by this film’s refusal to deliver any obvious punch-lines to the hundreds of subtle jokes strewn throughout—or any sort of storyline cohesion whatsoever for that matter. Over time, however, I just stopped caring about any of that. It’s important to realize this movie, although funny, isn’t really trying to be funny. In fact it’s barely even trying to be a movie. Instead, it just seems to be a jumble of random unfiltered thoughts, inside jokes, and humorous anecdotes seemingly channeled directly from director Katsuhito Ishii’s brain to celluloid on a whim. That’s not to say it’s not a quality production; quite the opposite in fact. It’s not often so much concerted effort, talent, and general care is put into a project as unapologetically absurd as this one. The plot is nigh-impossible to explain (although I’ll certainly give it a whirl) but over time it does kind of come together, albeit non-linearly, interlinking each character’s stories with the others either directly or through the people each of them has come in contact with. You get the distinct impression that everyone knows everyone else, although none of them really acknowledge this outright.

Funky Forest: The First Contact starts out in a weird stark white fantasy world where the characters often seem to drift off to while day-dreaming. Takefumi (Ryo Kase) is sitting back in the cockpit of some sort of suppository-esque spacecraft watching a hyperactive manzai team called The Mole Brothers on a mini television view screen. He eventually lifts off and after a short title sequence we see little Hataru (Maya Banno) having some sort of psychokinetic battle with a blobby creature before retreating back to the natural world to face the horrible reality of her homework.

We’re then introduced to “The Unpopular with Women Brothers”; Masaru (Tadanobu Asano) the guitar brother, Katsuichi (Susumu Terajima) the homeroom teacher/traditional Japanese dance enthusiast, and Masao (Andrew Alfieri) – a chubby white kid with a rampant Snickers addiction and an obvious cursory understanding of the Japanese language. We get a little sample of the interaction between the three before the scene once again cuts to yet another new character named Notti jogging through the park before finding a spot to collapse for a nap.

Notti is currently living with Takefumi, her former English teacher from school. Although she’s perfectly content with the ambiguous nature of their relationship Takefumi wants to start dating officially. As he’s mixing some records together on his turntables a comment she makes suddenly makes him remember a dream he had.

After the initial bombardment of character establishing the film starts to hop back and forth between them in a non-linear way that eventually links their experiences to each other loosely, but never explicitly. We meet the chatty hot spring girls, the Piko-Riko aliens, and Katasuimi’s homeroom class made up of students between the ages of 9 and 45. We witness everything from intricately choreographed dance numbers, Cronenberg-inspired puppetry, a dog that writes anime story-lines with the help of a giant-headed interpreter, and a few crazy dreams that aren’t necessarily much crazier than the reality the film has already established. To explain it all in detail would probably take hours and be completely pointless, as this film isn’t really about following the story-line as it is about experiencing it and letting it wash over you like some sort of insane dream that you don’t really understand but you’re glad you had it anyway.

Although it is technically a comedy you can’t really go into this movie expecting every scene to be funny or end on a solid punch-line like. In fact you’d be better served just to know you’ll be entertained in general. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that the fact that this film could even be made and a ton of extremely talented people wanted to be involved in it serves as a reminder of why many of us are even interested in Japanese cinema in the first place. So my advice is to disregard anything I or anyone else say about it and just check it out for yourself. After the initial “wtf?”-factor wears off you’ll be in for a really memorable experience.

Watch trailer

---

Availability: US distributor Viz Pictures released "Funky Forest: The First Contact" on region 1 DVD with English subtitles on March 18, 2008. This release is stuffed with a ton of special features, some of which are as fun as the movie itself. For more info, see this link. Also, fans of the Mole Brothers may be interested in Ishii's follow-up animated feature, Hokuro Kyodai Full Throttle!!!!

---

Related Entries:

Tags: aniki anri ban aoi miura chizuru ikewaki erika nishikado funky forest hideaki anno kaho katsuhito ishii kazue fukiishi maya banno nonsense comedy rinko kikuchi ryo kase seiji tanaka shihori kanjiya susumu terajima tadanobu asano