"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Thursday, December 8, 2016

A Little TLC(w): Love Me, Love My Money (2001)


To be fair, I don’t watch a ton of mainstream romantic comedies, and to be even fairer, I’ve seen almost none made in Hong Kong.  But I feel like, even by cheesy rom-com standards, this isn’t a good movie.  By turns schmaltzy and raunchy, with a goofy contrived plot that coasts on the charms of its lead actors, Love Me, Love My Money is not for me.

Richard Ma, incredibly wealthy but notoriously stingy, is used to waiting for the other shoe to drop in relationships.  He knows that, eventually, the women he dates “only want one thing”:  his money.  However, a chance meeting with a beautiful young stock broker named Choi coincides with Richard’s latest ex taking some serious monetary revenge on him.  With his furniture given away and his credit cards reported stolen, Richard is temporarily penniless, leading Choi to assume that’s his normal state of affairs.  She offers to pay him for his help in her own relationship woes – posing as her boyfriend to get her father’s preferred suitor off her back – and it’s only a matter of time before, despite the lie hanging over all their interactions, Richard and Choi start falling for each other.  This isn’t bound to get messy or anything, right?

Very paint-by-numbers, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer (I lost track of how many ludicrously-tight-fisted cost-cutting measures Richard takes, professionally and personally, in the first ten minutes alone.)  It’s silly, predictable, and feels awfully over-the-top to me.  Also, while I don’t generally mind the sexual hijinks (here in the U.S., Hollywood rarely allows Asian actors, especially men, to be sexual beings,) but there are a few places where it goes way too far; in particular, there are a couple of really distasteful rape jokes that I hated, and which seem so out-of-place in such a frothy comedy.

I wouldn’t say it’s all dire.  What good is to be had can be found in Tony Leung Chiu-wai as Richard and Qi Shu (who I’m not familiar with) as Choi.  Though neither part is at all demanding, both actors sell their chemistry amid all the misunderstandings and whacky complications.  They have an amusing, slightly-combative back-and-forth, and in the film’s quieter moments, we see the makings of a nice connection between them.  Shu’s Choi is vivacious and engaging, very much the sort of woman who might be able to knock some sense into Richard.

Richard himself is nothing to write home about, and as I said, his assorted character flaws are greatly over-written.  Still, in spite of him being such a “bastard” (there’s a running gag about how his Chinese name sounds very close to the Canto word for “bastard,” and so women are continually “calling him by his Chinese name,”) Leung still infuses his performance with enough charisma that you hope for him to get his act together rather than for Choi to run for the hills.  I didn’t laugh much at this movie, but when I did, it was usually at one of his lines or reaction shots.  (Side note:  I love the few occasions when I’ve heard Leung speak English in his films, and this movie gives us a bit of that.  For whatever reason, he sounds so different than he does in his English-speaking interviews, and that tickles me.)

Recommend?

In General – I wouldn’t.  It’s possible that I’m just not the audience the film is looking for, but even for its genre, I suspect it’s not very good.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Not necessarily.  If you want the satisfaction/eye candy of seeing Leung in a role that, in Hollywood, probably would’ve been played by someone like Matthew McConaughey, go ahead.  I’m hoping, though, to find better examples of him in this sort of movie before I’m finished.

Warnings

Sexual content (including a few tasteless rape jokes,) language, slapstick violence, and drinking/smoking.

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