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Miki’s just stolen
200 million yen from his Yakuza boss employer, shacking up in an
obscure little motel room and laying low. Kana, Miki’s
ex-girlfriend has tracked down Miki in order to ask for the money
he owes her. Todohiro, Kana’s new finance has tracked down Kana
because Todohiro is a dork with low self-esteem and a Moe haircut.
Sonoda, Miki’s
yakuza brother, is on the case with specific instructions involving
money, murder, kitschy cameras and knock-off designer suits. That’s
not even taking into consideration the fact that the motel room
where this is all going down is bugged by the owner, a voyeuristic
superhero named Captain Banana and his sidekick-cum-hostage Okita.
You see, Captain Banana’s
entire life is built around peeping, and it seems that with a
group of miscreants like this, all his labor, all of his hard work
is about to pay off.
 If you can follow that short summary without the aid of graphs and
pie charts, you can tell off the bat that Party
7 is a rather silly film.
It’s too bad that, thanks to rights issues and the ravages of time,
the film is roughly a decade too late, as well. Originally released in
Japan in the year 2000, Party 7 is pure Tarantino-ian madness, sliding
comfortably into 1998-brand self-awareness, like Go without Jay Mohr,
or a Japanese Doom Generation without all that awfulness. At the heart
of Party 7’s problem is that, while all the insanity is going down
involving superhero costumes, peeping and polar bears, the story itself
is still utterly bare-bones, to the point where it could be a stage play.
There’s, what? Two locations in the film?
 Perhaps I’m being too harsh on the film – it’s hard
for me not to like a movie featuring a peeping superhero decked out in
a Batman and Robin-style outfit with a giant yellow helmet who insists
on being referred to as Captain Banana. But, upon multiple viewings,
it’s hard not to call the film out for what it is: flashy for the
sake of being flashy. Overly complicated for the sake of being complicated.
Party 7 is the type of movie I would have fully bought into when I was
16, but now the film just comes off as all too familiar – quaint,
even.
 Presentation
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Japanese film look all that
good when it comes to DVD. Sure, I’ve seen Japanese films with
spectacular technique and style, but it always seems like the film companies
didn’t want to throw any more money around than they had to, and
because of that, Japanese cinema always seems to come off as a touch
too dull, muted and with the appearance that it was shot through a few
layers of cheesecloth and chicken wire. Party 7 is no exception to the
rule I just made up. It’s hard to fault Synapse’s transfer
considering it’s pretty much what every Japanese film looks like.
The audio is slightly better, but that’s not saying much as the
action scenes are few and far between, and all that you’re left
with is a character play wherein every person onscreen is yelling their
head off.
 Extras
Where the disc really pays off is in the extras department – if
you’re a fan of the film, of course. The biggest feature, and I
wish other films would do this, is the inclusion of the entire film in
storyboard form. Unfortunately, Synapse didn’t bother to subtitle
this feature, but this hour-long display of sketches is rather interesting
from a technical standpoint. If that’s not enough for you, we also
have an interview with director Katsuhito Ishii wherein he goes into
the details of the production, characters and actors, The Making of Party
7, a twenty-minute chunk of footage that thankfully strays from the traditional
Japanese making-of style and sticks with behind-the-scenes footage.
We also have a selection of promotional footage, meaning we get two
theatrical trailers, a teaser, and two TV Spots. Each one makes an effort
to point out how “new” and “hip” and “unexpected” the
film is – close, but no cigar.
Finally we have a rather scatological alternate ending. That’s
new and hip, right? Poo jokes?
The Bottom Line
Party 7 isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s certainly a time
capsule of sorts, wedging in what you would expect from any late ‘90s/early ‘00s
film aimed at the youth of that particular point in time. If there’s
one really good thing to say about films of this nature is that they
never give you enough breathing room to yawn.
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