FUNKY FOREST is a hit or miss collection of very bizarre short stories that suffer overall from a complete lack of any narrative or story structure. Some of the skits are absolute genius (like the Babbling Health Springs Vixens stories or the school sport scene where a girl with a racket bats at the milk shooting out of a older man's deformed nipples), but other skits could have easily been left on the cutting room floor: the looooong dance scene on the beach; the forest house music scene; the "Transfer Student" cartoon and the backyard dance number at the end should have all been chopped. That might sound like a lot, but with a ridiculous running time of 150 minutes (!!!) trimming this monstrosity down to a quick 85 - 90 minutes would have done the film and it's audience a huge favor.To me the highlight of the movie was the above mentioned gymnasium scene with the girl batting that the old man nipple milk. It's was fucking genius and a perfect example of the kind of shit that runs through my head nonstop all the time. I loved it. It also starred Tadanobu Asano, who I think is one of the most talented actors I've ever seen. My second favorite was the Babbling Health Springs Vixens which is just a series of short stories about three attractive young women who go to a hot springs resort and talk nonstop. I thought it was riveting for whatever reason, it did help that it featured Kazue Fukiishi from NORIKO'S DINNER TABLE who I think is brilliant. Whenever she spoke I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen. The other stuff that I liked was the Homeroom skits about students talking in front of some very animated classmates. In the next room over there was a music class with some very weird musical instruments. In the hallway there was a strange sequence of events going on featuring a guy in a fuzzy, yellow outfit, an attractive schoolgirl, a guy with really short shorts on and a machine that looked like an older TV except where the screen should have been there was an oozing butthole with a miniature person inside it.
Everything else was mostly junk. The dance scene on the beach was torture to get through (even though the girl was beautiful); the scene with her playing a distorted violin in the forest made me want to jump into the gear of a combine penis first; the Guitar Brother moments looked promising, but went absolutely nowhere; the "Transfer Student" cartoon was crap; the backyard dance was pointless and to make matter even worse there was a three minute intermission!
Plenty of weird shit, but I can't recommend it. If you can find a copy to rent and have plenty of spare time I say go for it, but with the best scenes already on YouTube I can't seen any reason to buy it.
