The film starts off with a strange stand up act by two characters known as The Mole Brothers. These two characters stand on a stage having an odd conversation that really goes nowhere and has no purpose. Unfortunately, I found this to be very telling of the rest of the film.
We then follow a little girl's daydream as she shoots off into a strange world where she has psychic powers and then we head to a set featuring three brothers of different ages. The segment featuring these three is called "Guitar Brother" and typically deals with the characters' attempts at getting women... sort of. Mostly it is about the middle brother trying to write a song while the younger one listens.
Then we meet Takefumi and Notti, two friends who have known each other for many years, but haven't started dating. After their brief discussion, we go off to a hot spring where three business women (I think one of them is Notti, but I'm not sure, she could have just been someone that knows Takefumi) who are enjoying a day of relaxation.
These groups of characters reappear throughout the film in odd crossovers that are somewhat interrelated. Many of the characters seem to know of others from the other skits, but exact relationships are really unclear.
Eventually the film gets to a dream that Takefumi has that takes place on a beach. It starts with a guy dancing in furry pants, and then dancing twins in red plastic outfits followed by a giant pink animated woman that eventually turns into a soccer ball. Eventually Takefumi has to join in the dancing (next to a cartoon head) in order for this segment of the film to end and the intermission to come about.
This is followed by a dream that you are lead to believe is Notti's, but actually isn't since that is shown later. This strange dream features the Mole Brothers and Takefumi who have to convince Notti to help them save the planet Piko-riko by sticking a tube in her navel and activating a strange, if not disgusting, device. They pull out a very small sushi-chef. And then the movie gets really odd.
There are several "Homeroom" segments that appear in the second half of the film. While the people in the classroom appear to be normal, we see quickly that they are all dealing with a variety of strange alien creatures, and several of them look just plain disturbing.
Funky Forest: The First Contact starts to wrap up with a singles picnic that is hinted at several times earlier in the film, but turns out to be all guys (much to those guys' chagrin), then spins off into a heavily inked animation that, if it had more color, could easily be declared psychedelic.
One of the more disturbing shorts in this movie is a scene that takes place on a tennis court while a student is trying to improve her swing with some most unusual practicing. At first they involve a guy sitting on a chair spraying various liquids from his nipples, then starts throwing large green sticky balls at her until one is actually an odd pink thing that grapples onto her and gives birth to a muppet attached to her armpit. Put simply, this part, much like the rest of the movie, is just lost on me.
Funky Forest feels like there is some sort of message trying to be conveyed to the viewer -- but it is completely lost on me. I can usually try and interpret something out of a film (even if I know it is complete B.S.) but this is just way too random for me to actually get anything out of it, and quite frankly makes me wonder if there is some sort of meaning, or if I am just reading too much into it and comes down to my now firm belief that I just don't get Japanese comedy.
Quite frankly, I hope I am just completely missing the ball here and I don't see what hidden jewel makes it a good movie. It could be that, while I am a big fan of anime, when it comes to that culture's live-action films, I am very much in the dark. The whole movie feels like a collection of independent films or film student submissions, and while the directing and quality are good, the actual content is just odd.
