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Review
by Kozo: |
It's
that time of the year again. Besides red pockets and
(hopefully) a day or two off, Lunar New Year means
yet another opportunity for Wai Ka-Fai, Cecilia Cheung,
and Lau Ching-Wan to attempt to tickle our funny bone.
They did a fine job two years ago with Fantasia,
but missed the mark by a good 3000 miles with last
year's Himalaya Singh. Their latest attempt:
The Shopaholics, an urban farce about people
who like to shop too much. In the case of Fong Fong-Fong
(Cecilia Cheung), the habit is a major issue. She
loses jobs, forgets her responsibilities, and generally
acts like a total loon when let loose in one of Hong
Kong's omnipresent mega-malls. For Fong-Fong, shopping
is more than a hobby, it's a disease.
Enter Choosey Lee (Lau
Ching-Wan), a popular psychologist who resolves to
cure Fong-Fong. He also hires her to be his assistant,
which comes about during a breathless session/interview
where the equally-addled doctor keeps switching between
counseling and interviewing Fong-Fong. Choosey's problem
is that he isn't able to make any choices, from buying
his lunch, to selecting his fighting style (in a repeated
gag, Choosey can't decide which martial art to use
when kicking people's asses), to choosing his women.
Choosey has an ex-girlfriend, Ding Ding-Dong (lucious-lipped
Ella Koon), who's also a shopaholic, but one who's
lowered herself to knockoff goods and crappy discounted
merchandise. Fong-Fong also has another guy, insanely
rich tycoon Richie Ho (Jordan Chan), who alternates
between being a tightwad miser and a spendthrift,
the latter of which happens when someone competes
with him financially. The four eventually demonstrate
the seriousness of their neuroses by getting involved
in a four-way engagement, the resolution of which
is scheduled for their joint wedding day. How screwed
up is that?
The answer: plenty screwed
up, but that's where all the fun in Shopaholics lies. Wai Ka-Fai seems to be lampooning Hong Kong
citizens in general with his tale of spendthrift screwups.
Early on, Choosey Lee tells us that Hong Kong people
have plenty of mental illnesses thanks to their hectic,
fast-paced lifestyles, which are concerned with one
thing only: making money. As the stereotype goes,
Hong Kong people are all about the $$$, and get involved
in such sordid things as massive debt, rampant materialism,
and arbitrary choices based on a person's bank account.
There isn't room for serious issues in a Lunar New
Year flick, and Wai Ka-Fai blithely slides by any
real commentary by going for the screwball farce.
He does wring some sly laughs from his parody of Hong
Kong's culture of materialism, but makes sure to appease
the parodied parties by delivering a fantasy about
a gorgeous shopaholic like Cecilia Cheung getting
stuck between two incredibly rich and eligible bachelors.
If only real-life psychiatry patients were as screwed
up as the attractive neurotics presented in Shopaholics.
And there are plenty
of neurotics to go around. The parents are messed
up too, from Wong Tin-Lam, who has narcolepsy, to
Law Kar-Ying, who's a gambling addict and can't stop
using foul language. The matriarch of this entire
bunch is Dr. Phoenix Luk (classic singer Paula Tsui,
also playing a shopaholic), who's not actually related
to anyone, but serves as the mother thanks to her
overly-genial personality and way with psychiatry.
She eventually decides to solve the young foursome's
choosing issues with a whirlwind of phone call psychiatry
on their joint wedding day, directing them to chase,
dump, or trick their potential partners in a protracted
"get to the church on time" finale that's
as amusing as it is breathless and tiresome. Wai Ka-Fai
goes for broke with his back-and-forth climax, which
mines repetition and overdone histrionics to such
an extreme that it only grows exhausting. If you happen
to check out Shopaholics and find the breathless
pace, overdone characters, and rampant silliness tiring,
you're probably not alone.
But the speed of silliness
is half the fun of Shopaholics. Things move
so quickly and so forcefully that the film's lack
of anything substantial doesn't seem to register once
the credits roll. Only once or twice does the film
really slow down, and the moments manage to be semi-affecting
ones between usual costars Lau Ching-Wan and Cecilia
Cheung. Neither does anything in Shopaholics worth writing home about; each mugs and overacts with
the practiced professionalism of a Lunar New Year
film veteran. The same goes for the rest of the cast,
the only exception being Paula Tsui, who doesn't really
seem to act at all - though Wai Ka-Fai's screenplay
and direction don't seem to require it of her. Wai
doesn't seem interested in challenging anything or
anyone, and goes ultra-innocuous by making everything
incredibly light and predictable. The result is too
inconsequential to be truly noteworthy, but these
are forgiving times. Shopaholics is an entertaining
trifle, and fast, fluffy, and funny enough for the
masses. (Kozo 2006) |
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