This might
have fallen under the category of “kind of low-rent comedy that I know isn’t
very good but that I sort-of like anyway,” but it wound up falling short of
that for me. While the quality is fairly
in line with some of Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s other dubious comedies like Happy-Go-Lucky or The Royal Scoundrel, aspects of the humor get too uncomfortable for
me to really enjoy it.
During
the Ching Dynasty, the Emperor is suffering from a mysterious ailment, and for
whatever reason, it’s believed that the only way to cure it is to find him a
bride. And also for whatever reason, this bride is prophesied to be living 300
years in the future. Fortunately, they
just so happen to have a time machine recently captured from their enemies on
hand, and the Emperor sends his friend Wai Siu-Bo forward to the 20th
century to find his predestined queen.
There’s
admittedly some decent stuff going for this movie. The Ching Dynasty time-travel hijinks are
over-the-top but amusing, as Siu-Bo inevitably wreaks havoc while trying to
navigate the future, ostensibly working toward his mission but mainly having
fun in the ‘90s. I like watching him
break out the kung fu on random gangsters and always act entirely on top of
things even when he blatantly has no idea what’s going on (there’s a fun scene
of him making forceful demands about the food in a restaurant where he doesn’t
know the first thing about what he’s ordering.)
I’ve
never heard of Wai Siu-Bo, but apparently he’s a famous character from a novel
about this time period and has made appearances in Chinese pop culture before
(I understand that Stephen Chow has played him as well.) Evidently, Siu-Bo’s shtick is that he’s a
screw-up and a horndog with ties to powerful people who causes a lot of
(usually-unintentional?) trouble. That’s
basically what we get here, and it’s in the “horndog” part that I run into
problems. Not the mere fact of it itself
– I’ve enjoyed (to a point) other admittedly-problematic characters like that
before on sitcoms, like Howard from The
Big Bang Theory or Barney from How I
Met Your Mother. And aspects of the
sexual humor are funny, like Siu-Bo’s seven wives in the past wearing him out
with their voracious and adventurous appetites, along with some of his exploits
in the future. However, there are also
parts where it gets supremely uncomfortable.
There are way too many rape
jokes that go too far, and especially with everything that’s been in the news
of the last few months, I’m just not in the mood to stomach that kind of thing.
Which is
a bummer. Leung as Siu-Bo is often
funny, a sometimes-charming rogue with a high opinion of himself but not quite
all the competence needed to back that up.
He’s great fun steamrolling his way through situations he knows nothing
about, and he especially plays well off of Chiu, the low-level cop he co-opts to
help him on his mission. Some of the
comedy gets eye-rollingly broad, and Leung plays to the rafters at times, but
for the most part, he hits the mark in a more entertaining, just shy of
over-the-top way. So, it’s a shame that Siu-Bo’s
lascivious traits can veer off in such a creepy direction.
Recommend?
In
General
– No. The time-travel business is
amusing, and I might have given it a cautious recommendation like some of
Leung’s other middling comedies, but the rape jokes are just too gross for me.
Tony
Leung Chiu-wai
– As much as I’d like to say “maybe,” because a good chunk of his performance
is quite a bit of fun (and to be fair, other characters he’s played have had very brief moments that go to the same
uncomfortable places,) I can’t really recommend it.
Warnings
Sexual
content (including rape jokes,) violence, language, and drinking.
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