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Review
by Kozo: |
Lunar New Year films return with It's a Wonderful
Life - and when we say "return", we
really mean it. It's a Wonderful Life possesses
the standard genre iconography of Lunar New Year flicks
past, meaning it's chock-full of star cameos, overdone
acting, silly shenanigans, and manufactured sentimentality
that wouldn't fool even the most daft moviegoer. Not
surprisingly, the movie also stars Ronald Cheng. Hong
Kong's Prince of Comedy stars as Thunder, a wacky
heavenly god who once upon a time helped a mortal
when he was in trouble. The actual incident involved
a young kid named Ding Dong getting bullied by a loathsome
triad (Francis Ng, in a sly reference to the Young
and Dangerous movies). Thunder saves Ding Dong,
but he also promises to help him out if he's ever
in trouble. Unfortunately, Thunder hasn't kept his
promise in the ensuing years, putting him in proverbial
heavenly hot water. In order to right wrongs and spur
the film's loaded plot, Thunder heads to Earth to
help the adult Ding Dong (Vincent Kok) sort out his
issues.
Of course, Ding Dong's
current lot in life sucks. He's a department store
manager who gets bullied by the customers and his
colleagues, not to mention his boss Mr. Pak (Tony
Leung Ka-Fai). Ding Dong's home life is supposedly
pretty bad too; his wife (Louisa So Yuk-Wah) is a
screwy artist with a visiting cousin, a bohemian layabout
played by Cheung Tat-Ming. Brother Alex Fong Lik-Sun
is a stuttering loser whose gambling-addicted girlfriend
(Miki Yeung) gets him in debt with the triads. Meanwhile,
sister Fong (Kate Yeung) is despondent over her string
of loser boyfriends, and is on a perpetual crying
jag. All this plus the youngest two kids, who put
buckets on their heads and smash themselves silly
daily. Essentially, Ding Dong's life is loserville,
and Thunder is supposed to fix it lest the heavens
frown upon him, or something like that. It should
be easy, since Thunder has magical god powers that
enable him to grant wishes. Logically, he should be
able to fix everything with a snap of his fingers
and return home to his girlfriend, the Saint of Nine
Heavens (Mia Yam), right?
Wrong, and not because
there's some conflict or difficulty that Thunder faces.
Basically, this supposed god can't fix everything
by simply clapping his hands because if he did, the
movie wouldn't last for 100 minutes like its supposed
to. The filmmakers need to stretch this out, so they
do it by ignoring the basic rules the film creates.
To wit: even though Thunder has godlike powers enabling
him to control the people around him, he doesn't fix
Ding Dong's life by snapping his fingers because he
never actually considers it. Instead, he spends his
first days with Ding Dong fending off the advances
of Fong, as well as wandering around doing nothing
of real import. Ronald Cheng plays Thunder with his
usual earnest comic energy, but the star also disappears
for long stretches of time, leaving the shenanigans
to the rest of the cast. When Thunder finally does
reappear to help out Ding Dong, he simply downloads
some of his power to Ding Dong, whereupon everything
is fixed. Ding Dong becomes king of his household
and a hero at the department store, meaning everything
is okay in the world. However, there's still the issue
of Mr. Pak, who plots to do away with Ding Dong in
an elaborate plan that recalls the plot of The
Banquet. Will It's a Wonderful Life end
on the same downer note as the maligned Feng Xiaogang
drama?
No, of course
it won't, because it's a Lunar New Year flick. Ergo,
the film is required to possess a happy ending, if
not an actual quality cinema experience. Like other
films in its genre, It's a Wonderful Life is
messy and uneven, and rides silly antics and famous
faces to win box office dollars. The formula has worked
in the past; stuff like the original All's Well
Ends Well, or Eighth Happiness proved entertaining
and inspired, usually due to charismatic stars and
an infectious energy that current Hong Kong Cinema
has all but lost. It's a Wonderful Life possesses
some of that energy, but it's usually mixed in with
routine filler and more than a few failed jokes. The
filmmakers do get some laughs; some of the more inspired
gags include the riff on The Banquet (the bad
guys reason that they can pull off their plan because
nobody actually saw the film), plus a bizarre sequence
where Vincent Kok and Alex Fong watch a porn video
featuring Ronald Cheng as a studly tennis player in
a blond wig. The successful jokes can be credited
to the law of averages: if you throw enough jokes
out there, some of them have to hit. It's a Wonderful
Life bats about .400 on the jokes, meaning it's
already better then this year's earlier comedies, House of Mahjong and Kung Fu Mahjong 3.
Basically, the film does possess the power to amuse.
That is, when the film
isn't boring the socks off its audience. It's a
Wonderful Life may get some laughs, but it also
loses plenty due to its mystifyingly lazy pace. In
between visual or physical gags, there are numerous
scenes of actor banter or random nonsense, and many
of these scenes are both unfunny and too long. The
breaks give the audience time to reflect, whereupon
they'll likely realize that this is a manufactured
film featuring as much commercial conceit as creativity.
Besides the labored emotional subplots - including
a completely uninteresting love triangle between Thunder,
Fong, and Saint of Nine Heavens - there are also
more product placements than your average James Bond
film. Ronald Cheng is currently Hong Kong's spokesperson
for Coke, and nearly everyone and their father is
drinking Coke in this movie. It's a Wonderful Life also features a cross-promotion with McDonald's; right
now, you can turn in your ticket stub to get a free
strawberry shake at the restaurant. Well, in the film,
Cheng visits a former friend (Ken Lo, who makes a
verbal reference to his Dragon Reloaded character)
working at McDonald's, and the guy asks him if he'd
like to try a strawberry shake because, as he puts
it, "they're really good". There's even
a groaner of a reference to Paco Wong, godfather of
Gold Label, the artist management company responsible
for Ronald Cheng, Alex Fong, the Cookies, and more.
If the film actually made fun of its own rampant marketing,
perhaps this would be fun. As it is, it's just crass
and obnoxious.
But hey, it's Lunar
New Year time so you can take it or leave it. Previous
films in this genre were similarly crass and uneven,
and operated off of the idea that audiences would
be at the movies anyway, so why not produce ninety
minutes of wacky filler to capture their ticket purchases?
In movies like this, quality amusement is a fortunate
by-product and not a guarantee. With those lowered
expectations in mind, It's a Wonderful Life delivers everything it advertises that it will: 100
minutes of mild entertainment that could never qualify
as essential. As Ronald Cheng's directorial debut,
the film is barely passable, seemingly indicating
that Cheng is exactly what he appears to be: a likable,
sometimes annoying comic actor and a person who just
wants to please the crowd. Like its star/director, It's a Wonderful Life tries to please the crowd
too, and succeeds enough that blasting the film for
its lack of actual quality feels unduly harsh. This
is not a good film, but it's also not so bad that
we should go postal on it. We'll save that for Kung
Fu Mahjong 3 and House of Mahjong. (Kozo
2007) |
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