The Art of "Mo Lei Tau"

In the last two days, I saw two comedies that strive to exercise the so-called Hong Kong comedic art of "Mo Lei Tau." It literally means "doesn't make any sense," which would pretty much describe both Wong Jing's latest producing effort Beauty and the 7 Beasts and the Japanese comedy Maiko Haaaan!!!

Directed by the anonymous Chong Qing (though sources said it was directed by Chung "Feel 100% 2003" Shu-Kai) and written by the similarly anonymous "Not a Woman," Beauty and the 7 Beasts takes place in the 70s, when a down-on-his-luck star (played by Eric Tsang) meets his daughter for the first time (Super Fans' Meng Yao, which puts her two-for-two with shitty movies) and takes on five eccentric pupils with hilarity ensuing. He also has to defeat his nemesis Rocky (played by longtime friend Nat Chan) with his loyal secretary Siu Wan (an amusing Jo Koo).

Produced by Wong Jing AND Eric Tsang, which I guess is supposed to be some kind of comedy event, the film is filled with random gags that go on and on - including recycled scenes with supposed hallucinogens, ugly men scoring with relatively cute girls, and even a parody of both Jaws AND Alien crammed into one scene. As hard as they try to keep the audience amused, the film often drags with its short 98-minute running time, causing me at one point to really want to start playing my PSP. No, really, I really wanted to play it.

Written by Kankuro Kudo (Yaji and Kita - Midnight Pilgrims, Go, Ping Pong), Maiko Haaaan!!! uses a similar style to show male competitiveness and obsession with the geisha culture of Japan. Almost defying description, Maiko Haaaan!!! can be simply described as a chronicle of the lengths a man will go to immerse himself in the geisha culture that he loved so much for years. There's also enough movie parodies, politics, baseball, and instant noodles to pack into a 2-hour running time. It's overlong, the character goes too far with their obsessions, and it definitely wraps up too conveniently to be convincing; but it's also hilariously dumb and has an undeniable comic energy that's more fit for Hong Kong than Japan. Maybe that's why it was a commercial success in its native land.

So why is Maiko Haaaan!!! so much better than Beauty and the Seven Beasts then? They are both quite idiotic after further thought (actually, in the case of "Beasts," that thought came up about 15 minutes in), and both films have somewhat shoddy scattershot filmmaking that felt like the teams were throwing random things at the wall and waiting to see what sticks. However, Maiko Haaaan!!! is willing to discard reality and elevate things to unbelievable proportion ("latent potential" is probably the most contrived excuse for a film's plot points since the "eye in the sky" excuse in the ending for Eye in the Sky), with the audience willing to follow along because while it's obviously no longer taking itself seriously, it's still trying its damnedest to find new ways to make people laugh.

It's not like Wong Jing and co. were taking anything seriously, either, but they just simply kept recycling things that might have made people laugh in the 70s (the movie's excuse for that is probably that it takes place in the 70s). In other words, it undermines the audience by giving them things they have seen before and expect them to welcome it back like an old friend. Instead, it's like finding that expired carton of milk in the refrigerator that you should've thrown away weeks ago. They even dare to have a musical number in the end that proclaims "a good movie is not easy to make." They're actually quite right - Beauty and the 7 Beasts was announced, produced, and released in the course of just over a month, and it's not very good.

With the originator of "mo lei tau" showing obvious signs of creativity failure, will Japan carry the torch to become the new master of "mo lei tau"? As long as screenwriters like Kankuro Kudo keep working, I wouldn't rule out that possibility.

Exodus, or Pang Ho-Cheung's Most Dividing Work Yet

Went to check out director Pang Ho-Cheung's latest dark comedy Exodus. I'm trying not to give much of a plot description because the way Pang handles the film is not something one might expect from this plot. The basic pitch is that a cop (played by Simon Yam) begins to find that women are possibly involved in a secret organization that conspires to murder all men on earth. However, don't expect anything as manic as You Shoot I Shoot. Instead, Pang underplays everything, letting viewers find out everything that's happened after they happen. As a result, Exodus is very anti-climatic, with not a lot of payoffs if you don't try and connect all the dots together.

I say this is Pang's most dividing work because even the audiences that have been fans of Pang's work in the past might not like this film. Beyond Our Ken and Isabella might've been Pang's venture into art film territory, but those films had something beyond arthouse sensibility to entertain the audiences. However, Exodus goes all the way into the arthouse, frustrating viewers who are waiting for something surprising to happen. Honestly, even I sat there waiting for the big payoff that never really arrived. However, I was still amused at what's on screen, and the style is more deliberate than crappy directing. Just don't expect to be very entertained.



After the screening, there was a 20-minute Q&A (too short if you ask me) with Pang and his two co-screenwriters Wan Chi-Man and radio personality/part-time screenwriter GC Goobi. There, they explained the title (something about that particular story in the bible being about leading and being led. It was a lot to take in at once), the possible Stanley Kubrick influence, and even why Peter Kam isn't the main composer of the film's score. While I'm sure there were many other questions unanswered (this film is begging for a commentary), the talk added very good information about the film itself.

I'm sure the ultimate question is whether I liked the film or not. I admire Pang's attempt to try for something that might alienate audiences, and the dark comedy does work very well when it arrives (Although Nick Cheung's liberal use of Cantonese curse words only amuses due to the shock factor, especially since it surprisingly managed a IIB rating). But this is no doubt going to not have a lot of fans outside certain circles, with many people probably end up hating it. However, after giving it a lot of thought, I do quite like it for what it tries to do and the questions it asks. I think it probably deserved one of the three best picture awards given at the Golden Bauhinia, just because it accomplishes a lot artistically. At least it would be more deserving than the similarly alienating A Battle of Wits.

Hell, I might even go catch it again at a Tuesday discounted showing.

Contract Lover, or Alfred Cheung, please come back to the 21st century

Contract Lover marks director/charm-less game show host Alfred Cheung Kin-Ting's first film for the Mainland China market. To me, it's the return of lazy filmmaking from the late-80s/early-90s. Then again, Cheung himself (with the box office word-of-mouth to prove it) said that the film actually tested quite well when he showed it in Beijing. What does that say about my taste and the taste of Mainland Chinese audiences then?

The plot descriptions are out there: successful financial....guy Richie Ren (I seriously have no idea what he does) has a rich life and a westernized girlfriend that he's ashamed to take home to traditional dad. Dad practices martial arts and - this is just according to the plot descriptions out there - resents the fact that son never took up martial arts. To get his parents to approve of the new girlfriend, he hires a contract girlfriend that acts so badly that the parents will take anyone else, i.e. westernized girlfriend.

The lazy part is that almost all of this is gone over in the first 5 minutes of the film via tons of voiceovers. During this section, the film also went over the girl they hired - Joe Lau (I think they meant Jo for Joanna, but ok) - and pretty much everything about her life. Usually, this is enough plot to stuff the first act, but Cheung amazingly stuffs all this information at once. This was going to be a long 95 minutes.

With bald Mandarin-speaking white homosexual best friend in tow, Joe Lau (played by the beautiful Fan Bing-Bing) goes to Richie Ren's house and attempts to cause chaos through all kinds of stupid things like giving sexy underwear to mother-in-law, teaching pole dancing, and in the stupidest one of all - break the wooden stick that's considered a family heirloom.

The film is filled with stupid ideas that sometimes actually do induce some kind of painful laughter, and a lot of them just feel contrived (one of the people at the screening I attended called this film "My Sassy Rent-a-girl"). I would be more tolerant to a film that actually makes me laugh, but Cheung has obviously so abandoned the Hong Kong market with this film. He's still attempting to cash in laughs with old tricks (honestly, who the hell still uses "The Moon Represents My Heart" and expected to be taken seriously?) that I honestly can't expect savvy Hong Kong audiences to buy into it. No, dubbing everyone into dense chaotic versions of Cantonese (Even the Hong Kong actors are forced to speak Mandarin here) dialogue doesn't make it any better.

Then again, there were a few young girls behind me that sounded like they really were having a good time until they walked out half way through. What does that say about the taste of Hong Kong audiences then?

By the way, I've reevaluated the film since watching it, and decided that Super Fans is still the worst mainstream Hong Kong film this year. At least I laughed at this one.

Blood Brothers, or How I Will Learn to Write a Fuller Screenplay

There are certain things you learn in film school, especially about writing screenplays - three-act structure, character arcs, good and bad guys, things like that. Some of these show up quite obviously in Alexi Tan highly-anticipated (in some circles) feature-length directorial debut Blood Brothers, and some of them are desperately missing.

Supposedly somewhat based on John Woo's Bullet in the Head (John Woo and his producer Terence Chang are producers on this), three country bumpkins go out to Shanghai to make it big working under notorious gangster Hung (quite well-played by Sun Honglei). Of course, something tears these lifelong friends apart, and a lot of blood will be shed.

When I review a movie, I think about expectations, as in what the film is trying to achieve. Rush Hour 3 is a crappy movie, but at least it doesn't even strive too much for any type of artistic quality, and it's entertaining enough. Not entertaining enough to earn any recommendation, but I digress. Blood Brothers strives to be a very serious and affecting drama about brotherhood and loyalty, but its pretensions is what kills it. The mood of Blood Brother is very gloomy, almost to the point of screaming "look at everyone emote! Get nervous, some important characters will be killed! That's right, feeeel the sadness from my elegant dark violin leitmotif!" But characters are underwritten and the film just simply breezes by some important plot points, undermining its storytelling.

Simply said, It was very easy to see when the screenplay was being written, it was written to get to the plot points that separates the three acts, along with fillers that comes between it. The film lacked fluid progression, and was even strangely episodic, considering it's only 95 minutes long.

Don't even get me started on the actors - No matter how you mess with the hair or what kind of clothes you put him in, Daniel Wu is miscast as the moral compass, and Liu Ye is now the young master of overacting. Unlike Wu, who's forced to be the boring central character who gets to lecture everyone about morals, at least Liu actually seems to have a bit of fun, as is Sun Honglei. Chang Chen plays the character that stands out the most, but his role, which is bigger than the trailer suggests, is again so underwritten that he simply seems to give up in the end until he gets to hold a gun and be a badass motherfucker. Some actors will manage to survive this, but I doubt anyone's status would be elevated by this film, including Woo and Chang.

I suppose the best way to summarize this is to imagine Woo trying to emulate Wong Kar-Wai. This is your run-of-the-mill John Woo brotherhood film without the action, and we know that Woo's worst directorial trait is doing drama. If Tan really wanted to live up to the Woo/Chang name, then lighten the hell up, man. I honestly wasn't expecting much, and my instincts was sadly way too right on. That lowered expectation itself is what prevented Blood Brothers from being the disappointment of the year.