Review: A Delicious Way to Kill

By kevin on October 13, 2006 at 2:05am EDT

A Delicious Way to Kill is an absurd comedy/murder mystery which originally aired as a television special on BS Fuji in February of 2006. It was directed by Nylon 100°C troupe member Keralino Sandorovich. Sandorovich draws a lot of his creative inspiration from the collective works of Monty Python, and that brand of nonsense comedy often shines through in whatever he does. This movie is no exception.

Yuka (Megumi Okina) is a socially inept elementary school teacher who can’t seem to keep a man around due to her sub-par cooking ability. When a boyfriend invites himself over for dinner she finally decides to plunk down 200,000 yen on cooking lessons in hopes of making a good impression. The date doesn’t really work out quite as planned but since she can’t get a refund she’s stuck with the cooking class for the rest of the year.

While in the class she meets Kanae (Inuko Inuyama), the wife of her boss. Kanae decided to take cooking lessons after witnessing her husband giving his lunch to a dog. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that he’s spent the first 23 years of their marriage finding various creative ways to dispose of her meals, seeing her cooking as an endless Hell of which there is no escape.

The next day at cooking class the teacher, Toudaiji, never shows up. Beicon, his assistant, is convinced Yuka must know something about it because Toudaiji had been asking for her cell phone number earlier. Kanae devises a plan to have her friend, Kiyomi (Nobue Iketani) check up on him because she lives in his building. Instead, she witnesses him plummeting to his death, landing in front of her on the sidewalk. Yuka is convinced he committed suicide because of her. She thought he was hitting on her because she’s so young and beautiful (humility is not one of her strong points) and she spurned his perceived advances via email before he died.

One day Kiyomi witnesses Toudaiji’s wife Mari carrying a cake and smiling and immediately gets suspicious. Of course she immediately tells Kanae about it and when Kanae’s college friend Tomiya tells her he saw Mari eating cake and laughing at the funeral on television Kanae decides they need to investigate this woman for Yuka’s sake, and the sake of general nosiness.

The next day Kanae and Kiyomi invite themselves into Mari’s apartment under the guise of offering their condolences and while snooping around they discover a very suspicious looking toaster. Of course this is all the evidence they need to justify their continued snooping. After a discussion involving several implausible yet completely hilarious murder plot theories they eventually recruit Yuka to help them break in later that night. Now fancying themselves as “pro detectives”, the three manage to scam their way into the condo unit. Mari returns unexpectedly and while hiding the three women overhear her talking to someone she seems quite familiar with and addresses only as “Ta-kun”. They immediately surmise that he must be her accomplice in Toudaiji’s murder and Yuka is finally able to resolve some of the guilt she felt for causing his death. Now all the would-be detectives have to do is figure out Mari managed do it.

This movie is a pure comedy from beginning to end and barely has a moment of seriousness at any point throughout. Much of the humor comes from the fact that completely ridiculous lines are delivered with absolute conviction. In fact, without a rudimentary understanding of Japanese or the benefit of subtitles you’d probably assume this was a serious drama for a good while before figuring out something’s a little bit odd. At times characters will seem nearly coherent and come very close to coming up with an intelligent theory (which is usually already abundantly clear to the audience) before veering off again and making it obvious they have no clue what they’re talking about. This is further driven home by the fact that the only character in the film that’s able to figure out what’s going on besides the murderers themselves is a little boy in Yuka’s class.

Megumi Okina is particularly funny in her role as the extremely easily-annoyed Yuka. She’s completely rude for the bulk of the movie, spending most of her time telling people to shut up or calling them idiots, but instead of getting offended they just continue on with the conversation as if she’s acting completely normal (except Beicon, who makes it pretty clear early on that he hates her). Obviously this brand of comedy is very hit or miss. Either you’ll find almost every line in the film hilarious or it will just seem completely stupid and pointless. I happen to be someone that enjoys silly deadpan humor so “A Delicious Way to Kill” is an instant favorite of mine and I’d recommend it to anyone who can find it.