Crazy Lips (2000)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This movie is awful. The Plot is impossible to follow. Even if you got rid of the sickening and confusing visuals, there is no natural progression of events in this movie. None of the character's motivations are clear. So things happen and there is absolutely no explanation for these events, now or later.There are things that happen in this movie that are bad and no one would want to see these things. This movie is like a traffic accident except that unlike a horrifying traffic accident, it is very easy to look away from this movie.I am by no standard a prude or a radical Christian Conservative, but this movie sickened my sensibilities. I must warn you if you like gore, then you will not like this movie. If you like mysteries, then you will not like this movie.I'm pretty sure that the people involved in making this movie were all working with a different idea of what the finished product would look like. I don't think that any one person could work to make something this bad.This movie does not even have the redeeming value of being so bad that it could be considered funny.I came to own this movie. I will not say that I actually purchased it, but I can't deny that I did. I had to give it away and make the poor sap who took it promise not to tell anyone where he got it. He then gave it away under a similar contract. The movie ended up back on his doorstep like a sick and unwanted cat.

Where do you start with a movie like this?I guess from the beginning? Crazy Lips is a Japanese comedy film with some horror-thriller elements thrown in. The basic storyline centers on a family being besieged by reporters and the local police. The brother in the family is suspected of being a serial killer who has disposed of his victims by chopping of their heads. The police want the remaining family members, mother and two daughters, to tell them where the brother is. Daughter Satomi, essentially the protagonist, believes her brother is innocent and enlists the aide of two bizarre, and ultimately unscrupulous, psychics to help her find the real murderer.The film starts of in a fairly straightforward manner. There are some interesting cuts between what's happening in the "real world" of the film and what we then see through the television camera eye. Nothing unconventional, at first. When the psychics enter, Crazy Lips shifts from mystery/thriller to horror and proceeds from there to the unconventional, disturbing and comically surreal. To give an illustration of this consider this progression, Satomi is harassed by the police, her mother is raped by one of the psychics, Satomi realizes she has destructive psychic abilities and kills a detective, federal agents talk to her through the television and she is forced to have sex with a recently hung corpse.And, believe it or not, it gets even more bizarre from there, which is why it's difficult to describe the film to anyone who hasn't seen it. This reason is also why the film doesn't really work. It doesn't follow any inherent logic within itself. Too many things are happening. Even the disturbing aspects of Crazy Lips get tiresome after awhile once the shock value has worn off and only succeeds in alienating the viewer. It is scary at times, funny, and many other things. The film is relentless.It is my understanding the director and writer were hired to create a film with certain guidelines in mind. It wouldn't be hard to imagine them getting together and deciding to create the most unusual film possible within the boundaries set by the studio. Crazy Lips certainly seems that way and the result is interesting at times, though ultimately tedious and silly.

Don't pay attention to the comments on the front of the cover: This is most definitely not a horror movie. In fact, I don't think it has a genre.When I picked this movie up, I expected to be scared. Instead, I was mildly disgusted, mildly amused, and mostly disappointed. If you like cheap, tasteless humour, then you'll like this. People say it's bizarre, but all they did was try to see how many shocking things they could put in an hour and twenty minutes. It almost reminds me of hentai (Anime porn), since nearly every time they rape one of the girls, they end up liking it. The necrophilia/anal rape scene was probably the worst. It was fairly pointless. If this film had a plot, it wouldn't fit.The funniest thing about this film was probably Lucy. That and the fact that every character was randomly a martial arts expert at the end. I wish I were that skilled with a heavy axe. Just when you think one character is sane and has a personality (the main character), she spits out "Nii-san (brother), I'm pregnant with your child!" All together, this is both a failed attempt at humour and horror. If you do decide to get it, don't expect a plot or anything. This is nothing like Takashi Miike or any other thing you've probably seen.

Crazy Lips is every sick and twisted thing you could possibly fit in a two hour movie, jumping from genre to genre without missing a beat, and it's all the better for it's apparent senselessness. It's billed as being "from the makers of Ringu, Juon and Audition", but don't expect a haunting ghost story. This film defies classification, and must be seen to be believed. My only warning is that this movie is very graphic and perverse. I recently held a screening of this film for some friends, and though many walked out before the end, those who stayed laughed hard and long. If sick and twisted are adjectives that have been used to describe you, be sure not to miss Crazy Lips.