The Happiness of the Katakuris

It's not as cohesive or as atmospheric as Hausu, another surrealistic horror-comedy, but THOTK is a delightfully absurd and entertaining bit of mischief from the ever-innovative Miike, who seems to excel at capturing domestic life shoved to the uttermost edge of sanity. One of the best midnight movies.

The best thing i can say about this film is that it's entirely unique, and that alone makes it a success in my book. The fact that it is also surprisingly hilarious at times, and actually manages to work as a musical is just icing on the cake.

IIII RRRUUUVVV UUUU

More extreme weirdness and sillyness from Miike. This time in the form of a musical about a family-run guest house where the guests have a nasty habit of dying. The tongue is planted way too firmly in cheek, but it's pretty funny, and definitely original. Out of the Miike films I've seen, this is the one I'm most likely to watch again, or recommend to a friend with a taste for weird movies.

Miike shows off another corner of his endless versatility with a proudly goofy dark comedy that pokes good-natured fun at Japanese family values and romantic cliches. The zombies I'm sure you heard about are an ancillary consideration and don't amount to much of the film's screen time or its appeal. The sincere parts fall pretty flat but are still a credit to the presentation.

There really isn't another movie like this. If there is, please show it to me so I can watch it and love it.

What's it all about. Who the fuck knows? Nearly every Takashi Miike film is an exercise in mental absurdity but the boundaries of reality are bent whenever he wants here. The claymation is a bizarre touch especially the first 10 minutes. It's certainly a change of pace with Miike trying to humor us with a musical dark comedy instead of grossing us out with sadism and shock gore. The atmosphere has shades of the classic Hausu. In more ways than one this film seems like an homage to that.

One of the best musicals (as vague as any genre label could be) for decades and it's from Takashi Miike. Disregarding some lame claymation ideas - this is just awesome.

Bizarre, often perversely funny. At some points the concept seems stretched thin and repetitive, though.

Horribly unbalanced, there are a few hilarious moments that are seperated by a lot of boring monotony. The first musical number comes out of nowhere and is amazing, and the claymation is great, but other than that only see this if you are a Miike fan to begin with (I am not).

Hilariously bizarre. A disney-like musical with a body count.

happiest movie I've ever seen I love it more than anything

I've never seen a movie that tried to do so much as this one. Sometimes hilarious, at other times profound. Great movie.

Such a funny dark comedy by Miike. Original, including the animation parts. If only it had less Musical parts if would have been esy more enjoyable and cohesive.

Pretty hilarious. Esp cos we watched it with cemetery coworkers.

New favorite musical? I was laughing uncontrollably throughout in a delirious sort of way where I didn't even know what exactly I was laughing at half the time; I think Takashi Miike may have literally broken my brain, and I thank him for that

Very strange but fascinating

A Felicidade dos Katakuris estreava há 20 anos no Festival de Tóquio. Acho que não consigo ver esse como obra-prima porque parece uma mistura de Canibal - O Musical com Svankmajer, o que tira um pouco do sentimento de originalidade sempre presente no Miike, mas ainda sem dúvida um grande filme. Box Versátil Obras-primas do Terror: Horror Japonês.

strong House vibes - every tone is driven to the highest level, and the charm of it all is draped wonderfully over it

A-

a beautiful lesson to be learned

If you're aware of this you probably know what to expect.

Entertaining but nowhere near as crazy as I expected it to be. The musical element, the part I thought I'd enjoy the least, turned out to be the most interesting. Who'd thing a musical dance number over a fresh corpse would actually work? I'm not saying it's tasteful, but worth a watch nonetheless.

It's a shameless mashup of claymation, horror, crappy musical numbers, family drama and oddball comedy, so it does merit a superficial comparison to Obayashi's omnistylistic "Hausu", but it's honestly nowhere near as original or engaging. Rather, it makes some sort of a sister-piece to Miike's gross-out extravaganza "Visitor Q", which was awful.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

Miike crosses Fawlty Towers with the Sound of Music. The result is pretty much exactly what you'd expect, except a bit slower.

A surprisingly sweet and heartfelt film infused with black comedy, claymation sequences and hilarious musical sequences. Excessive and extreme but still has enough pathos for its characters for some relatively sweet moments. Catchy tunes. Seems to be shot on video though which took me out of the movie for a little while - and I wish it had a bigger budget as the claymation seemed to be a crutch for when a scene would have been too costly otherwise.

I honestly don't even know what to say. You'll just have to see it for yourself. Takashi Miike is a genius.

You'll probably catch this on ABC Family channel some night.

Remake of the eminent Kim Ji-woon's debut film The Quiet Family, with added musical numbers, claymation, and a good dose of the Miike insanity. Plus Kiyoshiro fucking Imawano. Needless to say, it's fantastic, although some of the musical numbers could be more inspired.

çok çok güldürdü.

Certainly an experience. The sense of humor and songs are all great. It might be a mess, but it sure is unique.

"Though uneven, this genre-defying creation's spectacle is still never less than awesome to behold." - Ed Gonzalez

Possibly the strangest film ever made. It gains points just for over the top WTF-ness. It loses points for awful animation and transitions.

So what doesn't this film do? It features singing and dancing in a 'musical' format, it is dramatic, horrific, romantic, and funny. And there are zombies. In amongst singing and dancing. Different, that's for sure. But bloody good.

Weird as fuck. Miike is the da.

cute

It is easy to focus only on the outrageously unique style (bizarroland horror-comedy! with stop-motion!). But the characters and narrative is really something out of an Ozu wholesale catalogue, all of them brilliantly conceived. It only helps that they happen to sing and dance and bury dead people.

Esse filme merece reconhecimento por sua originalidade! Afinal, onde já se viu um musical sobre a morte? Enfim, tinha tudo para ser uma obra-prima, mas infelizmente Miike extrapolou o limite do bizarro com suas sequencias em "massinha", além de perder a oportunidade de intercalar mais números musicais. Mas mesmo assim vale muito a pena conferir esse filme, personagens engraçados (como o tal de Richard) e a cena do karaoke compensam qualquer erro...

"The director, bizarrely, uses the medium of zombie musical to show the charmingly shambolic way in which he embraces good-old family values."

Fantastic. Incredible musical numbers (including the single greatest discovery of a dead body ever) and apart from the slow beginning the rest of the film holds up surprisingly well. An impressively and refreshingly heartfelt and humane portrayal of a family from Miike, this film might seem empty and meaningless at first but by the end it reveals itself to be a very uplifting film. Loved it.

Rather disappointing. It was sold to me as a 'Zombie Musical', which was very misleading! The poorest Miike film I've seen to date. Worth a look, though the songs are pretty poor.

One of my favorites films ever. Zombies mix with the sound of music. just great.

Great

One of those movies that I just didnt 'get'.

Part cheeseball, part nightmare, all heart. It's kind of random and disjointed and if it were shorter it would be much better. Features the greatest discovery of a body ever put on film.

Obviously, this isn't going to be for everyone, but I think it has spunk.

Gloriously fun meta-musical bookended with some truly bizarre stop-motion animation. Far more humanistic than most of director Miike's work.

Very very original but after a time it starts to get boring.

A good film, and it's very funny. Though some of the singing parts seem a little overdone. It's a good film about family.

It's Miike all right, with great songs and dance numbers. The guy in the sailor suit rocks my world.

Original, but only for about ten minutes. After that, it just repeats without going anywhere, leaving a monstrosity of a film that entirely fails to entertain or make any worthwhile point.