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Review
by Kozo: |
An examination of your storm drain could prove much
more exciting than My Sweetie, a youth romantic
"comedy" that's more insipid than interesting.
Commercial Radio DJ Sammy stars as Lo, a too-nice
guy who works for a shampoo marketing department,
and is best buds with silly office girls Crystal Tin,
Kary Ng (of Cookies), and Ella Koon. Lo also has a
dream lover, the full-lipped Snow (model Gaile Lok),
a sweet but somewhat dim stunner who Lo sees on the
way to work every day. One day she disappears, but
she reappears as Lo's new office colleague, meaning
the dopey good guy has been given a chance to snag
his dream lover.
But Lo also has another
new colleague: Chan Chi-Keung (Head Cookie Stephy
Tang), who goes by the English name Strong Chan and
generally pouts for no apparent reason. Keung is a
longtime nemesis of Lo, having tortured him at one
or two times during their wildly uninteresting childhood.
The two immediately are at odds, but a stormy office
relationship is put aside for random and sometimes
completely lame office hijinks involving boss Chow
Chung (Daniel Wu's father in Love Undercover).
The old bat likes to hit on the ladies, and competes
for Snow's questionably coherent affections with Lo.
After a water-skiing contest (?) puts Lo on the boss's
hit list, Lo is paired with Keung for a "winner-takes-all"
marketing proposal. The two must deliver a dynamite
shampoo marketing plan or be fired. Meanwhile, Lo
tries to win over Snow, Keung reveals herself to be
a lot nicer than she's advertised, and the audience,
if they're smart, has figured out this film's plot.
If they're even smarter, they've also stopped this
DVD and started
an entirely different one.
If ever there was a
movie that revealed the secret to the success of the
Twins, Shu Qi, or any other famously reviled actresses,
it would be My Sweetie. People say those girls
can't act. Well, once you've seen the parade of egregious
non-acting from the likes of Stephy Tang, Gaile Lok,
Kary Ng, and more, you'll be begging for more Charlene
Choi whine or cutesy Shu Qi baby talk. Sure, those
girls can be annoying and tiresome, but they do project
some form of emotion that one could quantify as "acting".
Sadly, of the girls here, only Crystal Tin appears
to act, and her character and performance err on the
annoying side. The cute young things of My Sweetie generally emote in obvious cartoonish fashion, and
female lead Stephy Tang is not convincingly sassy.
She's certainly cute, but that alone is not enough
to make her watchable or worthy of a lead role.
Lead guy Sammy may be low
on the eye candy meter, but he's a goofy, game fellow
who doesn't take himself seriously. He also possesses
the screen charisma of a stuffed monkey, and probably
the acting skills too. Then again, it might be harsh
to rate he or the rest of the cast on this movie alone,
since My Sweetie possesses a screenplay that
even Wong Jing probably wouldn't put his name on.
The stuff that goes on here isn't romantic or even
funny. It's just rote youth comedy stuff that's strung
together with random gags, minor weirdness, and far
too much verbalization to be entertaining. Besides
Lo's omnipresent and uninteresting voice-over, the
characters express their feelings in five-paragraph
speeches, and copious metaphor is dispensed instead
of actual displays of emotion. This would make a better
novel, though still a questionably good one.
If My Sweetie has a positive, it's this: it's so uninteresting that
it doesn't register as insultingly terrible. This
is standard below-average multiplex fodder that would
have been right at home in the early nineties, except
back then they released four times as much product,
and some of it was even good. Nowadays, My Sweetie counts as a major theatrical release, which could
be the saddest thing ever. It's questionable if A-list
stars could sell the uninvolving platitudes of My
Sweetie, but with B-listers like Sammy and Stephy
Tang, you can count on this being a truly uninteresting
affair. Even big name cameos from a couple of comedy
superstars can't stop this from being an uninteresting
film. There's that word again: uninteresting. If you
look next to it in the dictionary, you may find My
Sweetie. (Kozo 2004) |
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