AACHI & SSIPAK (Korea, 2006)
Directed by: Joe Boem-Jin
Starring the voices of: Ryu Seung-Wan, Lim Chang-Jung, Hyeon Yeong
“...exceedingly grotesque...increasingly nasty...” – Richard Kuipers, Variety
“...even mature and physically fit viewers for whom etiquette and courtesy are important values need to think twice before seeing this movie.” – Chosun Ilbo
In a world where energy has run dry, in a country where the government robs its citizens of hope, in a land where freedom is a four letter word...there is one substance more valuable than gold, more precious than oil, one thing that powers the entire planet, one thing that rules them all: your poo. A vertiginous slide down a swirling toilet bowl of bad taste, AACHI & SSIPAK is a deliriously detailed, X-rated animated sci fi thrillah 8 years in the making that has repulsed movie critics and delighted audiences around the world. Not since the anti-authoritarian head trips of Ralph Bakshi has a movie done so much so quickly: within the first reel it’s dispensed more ultra-violence than a thousand action films, annihilated all boundaries of good taste and bent numerous intellectual properties (like Batman) over the table and violated them so gleefully they may never recover.
If Michael Bay and John Waters were forced to make a baby, it would grow up to direct AACHI & SSIPAK (title taken from the Korean word for “bum” and a Korean profanity) which tells the tale of a future world where feces is the sole source of energy and the government has implanted ID chips in the anuses of its citizens that rewards them with an addictive, hallucinogenic laxative called a “juicy bar” every time they have a “sincere” bowel movement. Aachi, who looks like Little Orphan Annie after ten years of crystal meth addiction, and Ssipak, a horny, hairless gumby, team up with a porn star named “Beauty” whose mutant butt earns her dozens of juicy bars whenever she drops a load. But the Diaper Gang – constipated killer Smurfs with AK-47s who are addicted to juicybars – a death-dealing government cyborg and the Diaper King all want to wipe them out before they can live large.
More than anything else, this flick is a series of action setpieces that will leave you breathless. Tasteless? Sure. But it leaves Jackie Chan and Steven Spielberg in the dust when it comes to mega-action scenes so hyper-detailed they take your breath away unfolding at 600 mph. With the future population of the world hooked on TV, drugs and pornography, A&S has a million opportunities to parody films and television as it races towards the final flush (one sequence references Aliens, Basic Instinct, and Misery before launching into an extended riff on True Romance.) The film itself blacks out from bad taste every ten minutes, jumping forward to another scene when it recovers and it all ends with a mushroom cloud, a tidal wave of shit, a cheerful promise to drain someone’s bowels dry and a mad scientist making a killer sex doll out of cadaver parts. Great big, brown mushroom clouds of fun for the whole family!