Naoko (Yukie Nakama) is the daughter of a famous magician, and an aspiring magician herself. She plays to mostly empty audiences: most of her tricks are small scale and simple; she does not use an assistant of any kind. She can't pay her bills and, just a few minutes into the film, is practically evicted. Her friend, Ueda (Hiroshi Abe) brings her in to perform for a big group of his old high school buddies, now all of whom are rich and important working for various Ministries of the government. None of them are at all impressed by Naoko's small-scale magic, and soon she is practically laughed away, with Ueda denying their friendship. She storms out, only to be met by a couple from a remote Japanese village who offer her a well-paid job: to pose as the goddess of their village, to protect it from a giant turtle demon. She accepts (any paycheck will do), but meanwhile one of Ueda's friends announces that he has found a great mythical Japanese treasure. He heads off to the john; his corpse is found moments later. Searching for the treasure, Ueada ends up in the same village as Naoko, as she finds herself put into competition with three others proclaiming themselves gods: those found to be impostors are warned that they will not leave the village with their lives. From here, the film grows ever crazier, even getting jarringly dramatic and somewhat graphically violent towards its climax.

Director Yukihiko Tsutsumi has proven himself a groundbreaking Japanese filmmaker. From the coolly received, but conceptually fantastic, Keizoku film to 2LDK (his entry in the DUAL project with Ryuhei Kitamura) to the extremely popular Sekai no Chushin de Ai wo Sakebu television series, Tsutsumi's work is always energetic and unpredictable. His films are not beautiful, but his camera work is edgy and seems to spit in the face of traditional composition, giving his films a distinctive feel. His visual style and love for cartoonish characters is perfect for absurd world of TRICK, and indeed the film would have likely fallen flat in the hands of any other director.

The cast has no real standouts, but they all find their place appropriately in Tsutsumi's world (no doubt the two leads had no trouble simply transferring their television characters to the big screen). Yukie Nakama plays her 'straight man' role quite well, and through her eyes the eccentricities of everyone else are all the more hilarious. Hiroshi Abe is his typical self, though it works slightly less here than in the fantastic "Shotgun Marriage" television series. Everyone else seems to find their place easily, but Naoto Takenaka fits especially well into his larger-than-life role.

The missteps here seems to be inherently imbedded in the film, and probably were as detrimental on page as they are on the screen. The first half's showdowns between gods 001, 002, 003, and 004 are funny and filled with great ideas, but it's a shame that these exchanges were not tightened up. As it stands, almost all of them go on for too long and really end up getting in the way of the film's momentum. The other major problem is the drastic change of tone at the film's climax: I won't mention it specifically, as it should come as a surprise, but you'll certainly understand when you see it. The film takes a brief, no more than two minute, break from dark comedy, switching to tragedy, but it is such a drastic and brief change that it has no emotional power. Still, the film overall is a terrifically enjoyable experience, and is one of the more visually oriented Japanese comedies. My favorite jokes, though, reside in the word-play, and practically none of them come through in translation, a fact that makes this film fall far short of the similarly-styled Kamikaze Girls, a film that takes much inspiration from Tsutsumi's distinctive brand of comedy.