The musical scenes seem to borrow or poke fun at american movies.
Grease seems to be the inspiration for the Richard "I love you" song, even down to flying and singing in english.
Thriller (albeit not a movie in its own right) seemed to inspire the zombies musical number.
Also random scenes of running in the fields (featured on the cover) are right out of "The Sound of Music".
Also still are little things like naming the dog "Pochie" (Poochie?).
Any thoughts?
I concur.
shareAbout the dog's name, "Pochi" is a very common name for dogs in Japan (as also are John, Shiro, Tama, and Nana)but the name probably originally came from the English word poochie.
shareIMHO Miike borrows but doesn´t poke fun. It is not meant as a satire, but funny of course.
The importance of family bonds, be it with a real family or an Ersatz family, occours very often in his films.
Tom Mes wrote an thesis like that about the generel themes of Miike-Films (btw is the whole auteur-theory sort of out of date...) in his monography "Agitator".
On the other Hand made Miike in an Interview fun out of the thesises of an "western interpreter"... he haven`t mentioned Mes, but i don`t think there are much more published interpreters ;P
- Miike borrows but doesn´t poke fun.
For me, it looked like a pure parody
" Look, there's two women fuc*ing a polar bear!" - Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas 1998
Same here. Countless parody elements
Abandoned guest house with strange murders: Check
Trying to imitate British accents: Check
Character wants love, but it turns out badly: Check (every. bloody. romcom)
Needlessly breaking into song: Check
I cannot see how anyone can argue that this isn't a parody
I've only seen a bit of the film but I noticed the joke from 'The Big Lebowski' - where they try to work out what was written on the notepad but it's just a filthy drawing.
Although I'm sure someone could have come up with that idea without seeing the Big Lebowski's version.