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Review
by Kozo: |
Prepare for annoyance.
Directed by Chan Hing-Ka and Patrick Leung, Simply
Actors looks like it should be a winner, but by
the time it's all over, any positive anticipation
has been replaced by impatient frustration, if not
possible anger. Yes, this movie is that aggravating.
Simply Actors has a winning concept, some decent
actors, and more star cameos than any film truly needs.
However, it also has too much dialogue, too many characters,
and too much time on its hands, resulting in a meandering,
labored experience that proves interminable. The film
possesses a point that's unconvincing and even pretentious,
and few of the characters really engage beyond the
most superficial level. Not even a fun turn from Charlene
Choi, who sports a fake set of D-cup breasts in the
film, is enough to save this one. Our disappointment
is proportionately large.
Simply Actors stars popular Hong Kong funnyman Jim Chim Sui-Man,
who's probably best known overseas for his pronounced
overacting in everything from Driving Miss Wealthy to The Twins Effect II to Mighty Baby.
Chim is famous in Hong Kong for his one-man stage
performances, where he manages to entertain the masses
in that inimitable Cantonese way that non-Hong Kong
people may never truly understand. His initial appearances
in Hong Kong film were usually more annoying than
anything else, a problem that was exacerbated by the
sheer amount of projects he took on. However, after
the initial rough going, Chim has since become a familiar
and even welcome screen presence, with his work in AV and McDull, The Alumni qualifying
as highlights. Simply Actors is the first time
audiences have been given a full-on Chim starring
role, and the actor is apparently quite game.
Unfortunately, he's
also misguided. From minute one, Chim puts on an overacting
clinic that's one for the ages. When he first meet
Chan Man-Long (Chim), he's a wacky policeman who puts
on a pretend panda show for an adorable tyke visiting
the police station. The scene drags on for too long
before duty finally calls, and Man-Long races to the
crime scene along with his fellow cops. However, Man-Long's
appearance on the scene involves wearing crappy hip
cop duds, and pretending to act in slow motion like
some sort of supercool movie cop. Obviously, the other
cops won't stand for his innane antics, but his chief
(Hui Siu-Hung) has a fine idea: enroll Man-Long in
acting classes. Apparently, an undercover cop named
Yan (shades of Infernal Affairs) has been offed
by a mob boss called Crazy Sam (Chapman To, doing
a blazingly annoying impression of Eric Tsang), who
left the message "crap acting" on the dead body. The
cops think they may need to send their cops to acting
school to avoid future detection, and plan to use
Man-Long as a test case.
Man-Long is only too happy
to sign up, because he's always wanted to be an actor.
The problem: Man-Long overacts in class too, meaning
everyone else at least attempts seriousness while
he's too busy acting like an idiot. Many in the class
dislike him for his annoying antics, but not new classmate
Dani Dan (Charlene Choi). Dani is a Category III softcore
actress who wants to better her craft, and Choi plays
her as a cheerful parody of Shu Qi, mixing up her
Mandarin and Cantonese, and skewering both with a
botched accent. Somehow Dani and Man-Long form a friendship,
while the truth slowly starts to dawn on Man-Long
that he's a crappy overactor. This occurs at about
the same time that his relationship with longtime
girlfriend Michelle Ye starts to collapse, leading
to the expected existential musings about "who am
I, and how did I get here", which we discover in an
extended heart-to-heart conversation between Man-Long
and Dani. The moment is a key one, because it finally
gets us inside the core of its lead characters.
However, the moment is also
key for the audience, because it's at that exact moment
that IT ALL GOES TO HELL. Previous to the characters
starting their soul-searching, Simply Actors deals up a decent comedy premise, and offers plenty
of amusing observations about the pretentiousness
of acting school and how a screwy wackjob like Man-Long
can disrupt it by acting like a loon. The problem
is that Man-Long is so out there that it's tough to
sympathize with him when the film eventually asks
us to. The film's comedy is largely uneven, but sometimes
it works surprisingly well. A softcore film shoot
(starring Dani Dan and Man-Long, with DJ Sammy as
the director) is especially amusing, if only because
it's Charlene Choi pretending to act lustful. But
it's just funny screwiness, and doesn't really endear
the character of Man-Long to the audience. We may
like him because he's popular actor Jim Chim Sui-Man,
but the character of Chan Man-Long? Balls to the wall
annoying. To be honest, after a good hour of his out-of-control
antics, the character should be smacked around for
being so out-of-touch with reality.
Man-Long does eventually
get back in touch with reality, but even then it's
hard to buy, because it's Jim Chim Sui-Man only slightly
overacting instead of completely overacting. Man-Long
realizes his current life is crap, and after the umpteenth
embarrassing display of overacting, finally thinks
about giving up the acting bug. However, Man-Long
finds true inspiration from a janitor (Anthony Wong),
who claims that acting school is full of failed wannabe
actors, and proceeds to show Man-Long where to find
better acting lessons. The two take to Causeway Bay
to find real acting on the streets, and the sequence
has some initial interest thanks to the Shakespeare-spouting
Wong, and numerous name cameos (Josie Ho, Sandra Ng,
Lawrence Cheng, Isabella Leong, among others). Basically,
the two observe people acting in their daily lives,
with running commentary from Wong about the genius
of these people putting on a show in the big, bad
world. The message here is that pretentious acting
classes blow, and only by wading into real life can
one get in touch with the true soul of performance.
Or something. Oddly, these new acting lessons may
be more pretentious than the ones they're lampooning.
Is this why we stuck around for an hour-and-a-half?
For a lesson in bohemian acting theory?
Truthfully, the film's "acting
craft" lesson is intriguing and even intelligent,
but the film takes far too long to get there, and
compounds the problem by plodding on for an additional
thirty minutes. Simply Actors is exceptionally
long for a Hong Kong film (nearly two hours), which
wouldn't be so bad if the scenes weren't so extended
in length. Every time a new scene appears it's generally
very, very long, possessing lots of dialogue and a
momentum-killing pace. There seems to be no momentum
in the film, with each scene taking so long that the
film seems to last forever. New characters keep appearing,
adding little to the already bloated cast of older
ones, and the film seems to drift farther and farther
from its original cop comedy premise. By the time
the labored climax rolls around, the players and the
situations may not matter to the audience anymore.
And after the climax there's still fifteen minutes
of only semi-amusing wrap-up remaining. Watching Simply
Actors is akin to watching your wallpaper slowly
peel away. It isn't just boring, it's maddening.
Simply Actors can still be enjoyed with a fast-forward button, as
the viewer then has the option of skipping the slow
or annoying scenes to get to the amusing or clever
ones. Also, the parade of name actors helps, and despite
overdoing it most of the time, Jim Chim can actually
act. Charlene Choi's performance is also worth checking
out, as she attempts far more than her Twins-required
cuteness, and surprisingly suceeds. Her innocently
provocative performance is one of the film's genuine
bright spots. Those minor joys give the film more
cred than, say, Super Fans, though that accomplishment
is hardly worth mentioning. As disappointments go, Simply Actors ranks up there because it attempts
both dumb laughs and intelligent commentary, and doesn't
really succeed at either. Writer and co-director Chan
Hing-Kai is no stranger to overwritten comedies, having
loaded umpteen films (like the La Brassiere movies, also co-directed by Patrick Leung) with his
clever musings since the new millennium began. His
efforts have yielded some solid yuks, but his pseudo-intellectual
comedy has usually been more smug than successful.
Basically, Chan needs a new trick, like perhaps returning
to cop-and-criminal dramas (he co-wrote A Better
Tomorrow plus all those Gordon Chan "Option" movies),
or simply hiring a stronger director to handle his
screenplays. He's still got some ideas in his tank,
which the decent premise of Simply Actors demonstrates.
But execution? Maybe someone else should handle that.
(Kozo 2007) |
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