BY DANIEL BAIG | You may have read my rave review on this site last year of the gruesome but brilliant Japanese thriller Audition. That movies auteur, the getting-more-famous-(or notorious)-by-the-minute Takashi Miike, is now back in American theaters, with a wildly different kind of movie.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (Katakuri is a Japanese surname, so this title is like The Happiness of the Joneses) is a comedy. While it does share with Audition a fair amount of (often deadly) violence, here that violence is usually depicted in . . . claymation. (Dont worry; the majority of the movie is live action.) Its also a musical, with some of the (deliberately) cheesiest (yet clever and even catchy) songs ever written for a movie.

The most important thing you need to know is that The Happiness of the Katakuris is also deliriously, giddily, wildly entertaining. This movie, to borrow a memorable phrase from Tom Cruise, who, at the conclusion of the screening of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, stood up and shouted, This movie rocks!!! rocks.

It should be noted that this is a very black comedy. If you liked A Fish Called Wanda, get in line for The Happiness of the Katakuris. If you found that movie tasteless and upsetting, steer clear.

Myself, I left both films grinning broadly.

The Happiness of the Katakuris tells the story of a family  father, mother, grandfather, son, daughter, granddaughter  who move from the city to the country and open a small inn in a not-too-prime location in the mountains, near nothing in particular. Business, when the story opens, has been pretty slow  as in, there havent been any guests yet.

Finally, one shows up, and the family is overjoyed. Until the guest commits suicide the very night he checks in. Now, if this news got out, in a highly superstitious country like Japan, theyll never have any guests. So, instead of reporting the incident to the police, the family . . . buries the body.

So alls well again, until the next guests show up, a very large sumo wrestler and his lady friend. Well, you know, sumo wrestlers tend to have real bad cardio problems . . .

Things soon get outrageously, hysterically out of hand.

To tell too much more would be to spoil the fun, but Ill add that theres also a killer on the loose in the neighborhood; a con man out to woo the daughter; a falling-in-love musical number that has the couple literally flying around; a kickboxing fight scene between a geriatric and a self-proclaimed illegitimate member of the English royal family; the eruption of a volcano; a tornado; a chorus line of decomposing zombies; a scene which approximates what a combination of Dantes Peak, Twister, The Sound of Music, What Dreams May Come, and a jungle safari film would be like; and a karaoke number which the audience (you) is invited to join in on, with the lyrics slowly changing color at the bottom of the screen just as they do on a karaoke bars monitor.

The performances are all great, but special mention has got to go to Keiko Matsuzaka as the gung ho for anything mother and wife, and Tetsuro Tanba as the grandfather, whos willing over and over to sacrifice himself for his family.

The only thing I didnt love about this movie was its bizarre pre-opening-credits sequence, which is a combination of live action, claymation, and stop motion animation, and is pretty disgusting. It also doesnt seem to have anything to do with the rest of the movie, except perhaps thematically, in that it presents violent death as having the potential for comedy.

Other than that, The Happiness of the Katakuris and Lilo & Stitch are probably the goofiest fun Ive had all year at the movies. Go see this before it becomes the Rocky Horror Picture Show cult classic its destined to be. Trust me. Youll be the coolest kid on your block.

Grade: A