Executive Koala

After the success of Calamari Wrestler, director Minoru Kawasaki has made a seemingly similar film—Executive Koala. What a great title. Executive Koala, however, is much different than his previous film. The fact that the main character is a koala is generally ignored and isn't a usually the source of humor or something that drives the story.

Instead, the movie chooses to parody murder mysteries, serial killer movies, and even kung fu movies. The humor tends to be either rather dark or surreal. Dream sequences, axe murders, musical numbers, koalas doing kung fu in their pajamas; there's a lot of crazy stuff going on here.

Mr. Tamura is the titular Executive Koala, a junior executive working at a Japanese pickle company.  The CEO is a rabbit.  Executive Koala is working on a deal to start selling Korean kim-chee along with traditional Japanese pickeled products.  It's a deal that could really make his career, and it's starting to look like he's on the fast track to success when things start to go horribly wrong.

His girlfriend is found murdered and the Executive Koala becomes the number one suspect.  The plot thickens when the police discover that his last wife went missing under mysterious circumstances three years ago, and that he's in therapy for having blackouts.  Is he being framed, or is he really a violent sociopathic monster that just happens to be a koala in a suit?

What to make of it all? It's so weird that I'd imagine some people will love it, and it's bound to become a cult classic. Unfortunately for fans of the Calamari Wrestler the film doesn't have much of the good-natured fun people might have been expecting; it's much more of a dark comedy. The characters had all been made so unlikeable by the end that I didn't really feel like laughing. The climactic battle came pretty close to redeeming the movie for me.  It just wasn't enough.

While it didn't quite work for me, I don't think Executive Koala is a bad movie. Recommended for fans of extremely dark comedies who'd like to see something that is also extremely weird.  Everyone else should probably skip this one.