Tian xia wu shuang

Chinese Odyssey 2002 is a really funny movie. If you've seen Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, He's a Woman, She's a Man, and any Zhao Wei movie, or the original Chinese Odyssey movies you have to see this. It's hilarious in a silly Hong Kong comedy way. And it has all the elements: action scenes, magic, love stories, and a Bollywood-style song number you will never forget. Oh, get it out of my head!

I don't know why it's not faring so well in the polls because I've seen it so many times but it still makes me laugh, and I haven't shown it to anyone who didn't find it funny.

The shocking part is that it only cost me $2.70 to buy this movie. In a state of recession, cheap laughter is twice as enjoyable.

This is a brilliant movie! Not only are there references to Wong Kar Wai's previous works and romantic kung fu films, but the story and characters are from an old Chinese tale and 1960's musical called Jiangshan Mei Ren (The Beauty from Jianshan) which is about the emperor who ventures out disguised as a commoner and falls in love with Pheonix, a lovely girl from the restaurant. The musical numbers and the continuing musical themes (including the La-la parts) are taken from the old 1960's movie and that type of Chinese musical genre. Chinese Odyssey 2002 puts a new spin into the musical numbers as well as developing the story between Pheonix's brother (Tony Lenug) and Princess Wushuang (Faye Wong). This film is enjoyable on its own, but when aware of the references, it just makes it that much funnier and witty. I highly recommend watching the original film and Wong Kar Wai's other works for their own sake, if not to just appreciate this multi-faceted film.

The thing that struck me most about this movie is its radiance. The music alone will tell you that this movie is about having fun.

The comedy is perhaps a little bit questionable, depending on you're tastes. Sometime's it's just simple verbal jokes, and at other times, it's just completely random. I found the randomness to be a little too weird to be funny at times, but most of the humor is fine.

My favorite scenes are the ones depicting pure enjoyment. One scene in particular that strikes me is the spoof of Chinese opera. Faye is singing, beautifully, as usual, and making lots of similies and such, and Tony just says a bunch of stupid stuff (probably because his character is uneducated). My favorite lines being: Faye: See those geese in the middle of the pond, enjoying each other's company like we are. Tony: Today they swim, Tomarrow they roast. Roast goose is truly delicious.

Often times in a movie about love, the ones that are remembered are the ones where the characters are creative in showing their love. I mean, it's not easy to give that kind of emotion to the audience with characters they have only known for two hours.

It's even harder to give the audience the enjoyment of being in the company of someone really fun. This song and dance, as well as other scenes in the movie accomplish this very well. While they're doing the ridiculous dances, Faye can be seen close to, if not bursting into laughter. The director and the actors really looked like they had great fun with this film, and that translates onto the audience.

The formulaic aspect of the movie, or the part i'm not so crazy about is the last 15 minutes or so. While i don't mind the plot's development, i feel the character reactions were a bit exaggerated. Both Faye and Tony end up going crazy, literally. There needn't be such an exaggeration to depict the sadness of the characters. In fact, that shouldn't even be a focus of a movie of pure fun like this.

It does ultimately end on a happy note, which is quite nice. In the end, i do find something special about this movie. Nothing really matches the pure enjoyment i feel from this movie. Every time i think of the drunken song, i can't help but smile. There are some parts of the movie which aren't quite as wonderful, but it's definitely worth you're time.

This film is produced by Wong Kar Wai. There are a lot of inside jokes and spoofs on Wong's earlier movies. My favourite is the one where the Tony and Faye talk about distance. This is a re-make of their 'Chungking Express' encounter. I was in stitches. If one is not familiar with Wong's work, the movie will therefore be labelled as nonsense.

First up, anyone wanting to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style martial arts carry-on should look elsewhere. This film is a one of the increasingly perplexing (to Westerners just after kung fu) school of Hong Kong comedies known as 'mo lei tow' (nonsense) films.

The basic feel of the movie is something akin to the Simpsons set in Ming dynasty China. Women pretend to be men, women fall in love with women pretending to be men, the women pretending to be men fall in love with the actual men, who are trying to fix them up with the women. It's a bit like a Shakespeare comedy, actually, with hilarious surreal flourishes.

So that's all good. Tony Leung is great as the male lead, as always (he's the Hong Kong equivalent of Robert Redford or Paul Newman, though somewhat younger). Faye Wong is equally good as the female lead, and her singing is lovely. The best bit in the film is a scene where Leung and Wong get stuck in quicksand and try to persuade a goose to rescue them.

Sadly, things go awry. Producer/director Wong Kar Wai is notorious (and critically lauded) for making arty, boring films (examples include the dreadful Ashes of Time, and In the Mood for Love), so I was pleasantly surprised that this film was so different. Alas, at the end, Wong tries to inject dramatic weight into proceedings to resolve the romantic tensions, and the action becomes a series of oblique internal monologues containing near-meaningless aphorisms (Wong's "forte"). Stumbling and choking under the weight of this nonsense (and not good, mo lei tow nonsense either), the film's conclusion is unnecessarily leaden and downbeat.

Still, Chinese Odyssey _is_ a funny film, and even the downhillness at the end can be excused. For more genuine examples of mo lei tow cinema (ie, not contrived by an arthouse director selfconciously trying to make his mark on the genre), try Flying Daggers (1993) or Stephen Chow's Forbidden City Cop (1995). In fact, just watch any Stephen Chow film.