Getting Any may come as an entirely strange experience for international viewers familiar with Takeshi Kitano’s lyrical film-festival yakuza pics. However, it's a return to more familiar ground for the director, the Renaissance man who started his career in comedy as part of the “Two Beats” duo. In this 1995 release, he moves away from the typical deadpan jokes sprinkled in his dramas to an all-out slapstick comedy full of sex humor, pop culture parodies and simply bizarre moments mashed together to create a wildly enjoyable hybrid of Airplane, Woody Allen’s Take the Money and Run and Looney Tunes cartoons.
In fact, our main character, Asao, plays a perverted middle-aged man who is essentially a sex crazed Wile E. Coyote. While his mind is packed with wild sexual fantasies, he lacks a girlfriend with whom he can fulfill them, and because a TV show tells him so, he decides a car is the key to his dreams of crazy orgies. With that deep contemplative premise, the film sets out with a constant stream of Asao’s repetitive plots to acquire money, a car, sex, or all three and he finds himself in all sorts of situations from a film-set, a yakuza deal, a science experiment with mad scientists and more.
With that, Kitano simply puts his faith in the constant bombardment of one new ploy after another for laughs. He employs a rapid-fire style of humor that refuses to let the taste of a bad joke linger because it so quickly follows with another that will surely make up for it. It’s never complex, sophisticated humor and once the viewer gets a feel for the film, it may often be predictable. But even if a viewer is alone at home and his hamster just died, Getting Any will make him giggle aloud like a crazy person. The pic is full of visual gags, chaotic events and tons of parodies—a fun game for pop-culture fiends who will want to spot the references to Zatoichi, Long Wolf and Jo Shishido flicks. Kitano even tackles American material with vague spoofs of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat it’ video, Ghostbusters and The Fly.
Plot structure goes straight out the window within seconds with just joke after joke taking the film in wild directions. There is no regard for consistency, which for the most part, works in the film’s favor. The main problem is the final twenty minutes that take a downward spiral with an unfunny, and perhaps a little too absurd turn to end the film on a disappointing note.
Still, Getting Any comes recommended for fans of Kitano’s comedy and stupid classic “slip on object” gags or those who may enjoy the arbitrary pirate thrown into a scene for good measure. Viewers should know within the first ten minutes whether this film is for them. It is somehow simultaneously stupid and clever—perhaps clever in its stupidity, and Kitano shows us that’s usually what the best comedy is.
Reviewed by Tarun
