Japan Cuts ’26: Gosh!!

It's like a Hudson & Rex for stoners. The world thinks Oliver is a heroic police dog, but whenever his handler, Ippei Aoba, looks at him, he sees a slovenly middle-aged drunk wearing dog costume. Understandably, Aoba has difficulty reconciling public perception with his private reality. Oliver certainly doesn’t try to make it any easier. Nevertheless, they have been at this for a while. Like The Mandalorian, Sex in the City, and The X-Files, the hit 2021 Japanese TV series continues with an all-new feature film, director-screenwriter-co-star Joe Odagiri’s Gosh!!, which had its North American premiere at this year’s Japan Cuts.

Aoba and Oliver have recently been hailed as heroes, but it doesn’t make sense to the K-9 officer. He knows Oliver’s true nature and he realizes their success was dumb luck, with the emphasis on dumb. However, he is happy to work with his Academy mentor, Yayoi Hagoromo, when she requests their temporary transfer for a case. Considered the department’s best handler, Hagoromo can make Oliver act like a “normal dog” (as Charlie Brown would say) when she takes his leash, instead of a creepy drunk perv.

Of course, Oliver has a lousy nose, but it won’t matter much for this case. They are searching for Konishi, a compulsive “volunteer,” who became a local folk hero. Unfortunately, he wandered through a portal to a different dimension, very much like the mysterious red door “freelance” journalist Masatoshi Nagase walks through while investigating Konishi’s disappearance. However, instead of the dimension Konishi remains trapped in, Nagase arrives in world very much like our own, except everyday life is exclusively focused on Takoyaki.

Essentially, Gosh!! plays like Ted the foul-mouthed teddy bear, taking a detour through the Twilight Zone. Frankly, the mid-section roams so randomly out into left field, it gets a little lost for a while. However, when it comes to weirdness, it is tough to one-up. Frankly, it might have worked better on TV, in shorter, more focused installments. On the other hand, as a movie for mature (in terms of age, but immature of mind-set) audiences, there were no constraints on its rudeness, which was clearly liberating.

Most Americans have never seen Odagiri play a character as degenerate as Oliver. His wardrobe is also a real novelty. However, he commits to the lowlife canine behavior with unabashed relish. Conversely, Sosuke Ikematsu inspires tremendous sympathy as Aoba, for putting up with all the madness. Ironically, Eri Fukatsu’s performance as Hagoromo is probably sufficiently engaging to work in a more rational film, but she is quite the good sport navigating Odagiri’s lunacy.

Gosh!! is wildly inconsistent, but that is just part of its unruliness. Its finest moments are as wacky and surreal as Quentin Dupieux’s best films (very much including Smoking Causes Coughing). It is a bold programming choice, but it has potential to become a genuine cult favorite. Enthusiastically recommended eccentric viewers, Gosh!! introduced itself to New York at the 2026 Japan Cuts.