Sundance Review: “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!”

Since the first entertainers emerged with their sketches and tableaus, comedy has been meant for an audience, not an individual. The high of a laugh, a gasp, a scream shared with strangers cannot be compared to one indulged in isolation. And a film so clearly designed for the cinema cannot be enjoyed in the same way on the couch at home. We’ve heard this sentiment repeated ad nauseam over the last five years, and it has never been more true than when considering Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! An imaginative, deep-hearted journey through attraction and grief, the third film from director Josef Kubota Wladyka explores the hilarity of wanting another man so similar to the one you already have, and the euphoric turn-on of seeing them make out. Told with such ease and grace that you would think this was Wladyka’s tenth film, not his third. However, without the energy of an audience buzzing with matching emotion to those onscreen, the film does fall flat at times. Dance scenes that could so easily inspire applause breaks feel hollow, playing to an empty theater. This absence of sensation brings the film’s flaws to the surface. The use of dreams for some numbers feels confusing. How plot-reliant the film is in actuality, when it presents itself as something more weightless and carefree with its title and promotional image, now becomes obvious. Maybe not an issue, but something to think over when the film’s pace leaves room for the mind to wander. A farcical, frantic, and profoundly emotional final act does bring the ship in nicely, ending the film on the note you wished it’d been hitting the whole time. ★★★½ Kenna Wong Ghaill