Takashi Miike's oeuvre is quite mixed. He has a base of devout fans but also quite a few haters. THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS is one of his most lovable and least offensive films, filled with charming characters and tacky music and dance scenes.The movie focuses on a Japanese family, the Katakuris, that tries to run a guest house in the mountains, but with little success. Unfortunately, their very first few guests after opening already spell disaster...This is the overall plot, but then there's also just a whole bunch of sheer randomness. Mystic dream sequences, claymation death scenes, and a Japanese spinster in a navy suit trying to fool the family's daughter into thinking he's both a member of the US navy and a member of the Royal family. The nonsensicality of a lot of the movie's happenings just adds to the overall lovability: It makes everything seem quirky and weird.

An extended family move out to the country to run a B&B, only to find that each rare and sorely-needed guest winds up dead on their property. Naturally this prompts a series of frantic musical sing-along productions before the shovels come out. One of Seven films made in 2001 alone by the absurdly prolific Takashi Miike (best known in the west for his more intense horror works such as the magnificent "Audition" and "Ichi The Killer"), this loose remake of Korean film "The Quiet Family" has all the rough edges and scatter-shot structure you'd expect of a film presumably made over a quiet weekend between projects. But for all that, it's frequently very funny, admirably off-kilter, and features quite the finest claymation soup- sprite that I've seen this year.Should you find that "Les Miserables" simply doesn't have the epic scope and emotional punch you want in a musical, then this combination of "The Sound Of Music", "Saturday Night Fever", "Shallow Grave" and "Shaun Of The Dead" is absolutely what you've been looking for.

I am always a fan of Takashi Miike. This film really showed the strange and crazy mind of his. With him and his writers, they made one interesting film. Imagine a horror, comedy, musical, slapstick, claymation, love story. Sounds kind of hard to take all in; and it is at first. But you really come to enjoy the craziness of this film. The cast is pretty good. The father is Kenji Sawada who seems to always have things happen. The mother is Keiko Matsuzaka who seems to take charge in the worst situations. Then you have the brother Shinji Takeda who is an ex con. The sister is Naomi Nishida who only wants to find a husband. Her daughter is played by Tamaki Miyazaki who is a cute little girl who is also the narrator. Then you have the grandpa played by Tetsuro Tanba who is just kind of out of his mind. The whole cast had different personalities and throughout the film you see more interesting characters. Also in the film you will see zombies and death followed by happy musical numbers. Then you will see reality burst into the abnormal with claymation scenes; creative and interesting. This film will pretty much make you go through every emotion. Combining the goofy with a normal reality. The story line is really hard to explain. Instead of explaining it, it is better to watch it and experience it. This film is truly not in the norm at all and that is what makes it so great to watch. There is always something going on. The only really thing I had against it is that it can get a little too confusing and some of the characters moments can get a little too goofy. But no matter what happens, you still want to watch it. I actually caught myself not paying attention to the story at parts and just being interested in the moment going on. Another crazy film by Takashi Miike.

Probably the most random thing iv ever seen! First thoughts through my head were what the hell!? and yet its brilliant!The beginning really has nothing to do with the rest of the film apart from that hint of death and some people who turn up for a tiny bit in the middle...it in a way prepares you for the randomness ahead. After such a random start you would expect the randomness to continue but it completely dies for a good 15 mins of introduction of the Katakuri family. Not the most normal of families...A selfish rarely smiling grandad, overly happy dad who is always sure everything will turn out OK. A mum who cooks and is very over the top, a daughter obsessed! with falling in love, a normal son who is disapproving of everyone but changes at the end and the daughter's daughter who pretty much just looks at the camera now and again throughout the film. Poochi the dog is also crazy! This family have moved to the middle of nowhere and built a guest-house. They have never had a guest when a famous person off the TV comes to stay and ends up killing themselves but because the family don't want people to know their first guest died they just bury her away int he woods...a string of deaths follow some amusing situations and again they bury them...its rather comic throughout... When anything goes wrong they sing and dance and everything becomes right again..its odd.With a zombie scene, love scene, fight scene and random other scenes its a great watch! With all the major things being in modelling clay its all rather random but yet you have to see it to the end.BRILLIANT film! Odd...no real plot but humorous and so so random!