Funky Forest: The First Contact

Imagine late-night channel-surfing in a Shinjuku hotel while shit-faced on sake, and you’ll start to approximate the non-sequitur sensations of Funky Forest, a disastrously misguided string of recurring sketch comedy, vaudeville slapstick, phallocentric body-horror grotesqueries, schoolgirl fetishes, dance breaks and flights of astro-fantasy. The scattershot approach inevitably scores a few laughs—but the humor is rooted more in drunken shock than inspired surrealism. Charitable reviewers might write off this movie’s eccentricities as lost-in-translation comedy. Wiser heads will see only half-baked crap.