Honey Money Phony

"Honey Money Phony" is a charming comedy that really surprised me in a good way. The plot revolves around a group of people trying to get back the stolen cash from a con artist, and it's both engaging and fun. The performances vary, but they all bring a certain charm, thanks to a plot that keeps you hooked. The film's quirky vibe is spot on, striking a nice balance between being edgy and heartwarming.

Directed by Da Peng and written by Su Biao, "Honey Money Phony" is set in the fictional city of Aoo Kang, China. It takes a straightforward idea and turns it into a series of entertaining escapades.

The main character, Lin Quinlang (played by Gia Jin), is a 29-year-old insurance worker who ends up in debt because her ex-boyfriend, Zhang Zi Jun (played by Wang Hao), swindled her out of ¥200,000. Her quest to reclaim her money, with help from various characters, is the heart of the story. The film does a great job of showcasing Quinlang's different "side hustles," giving us a glimpse into her character and determination.

Quinlang's best friend, Dong Xiaohui (played by Li Xueqin), is a former colleague with a past in embezzlement. Xiaohui's questionable schemes add depth to her character and contribute to the film's humor. While the movie doesn't endorse scamming, it cleverly uses it as a plot device to keep things moving.

The chemistry among the cast is fantastic, especially between Quinlang and Hui, played by Sunny Sun. Their developing romance adds a sweet touch to the film. Other standout performances include David Wang as Bai Shitong, Hui's con-artist mentor, and Ada Liu as Hai Ou, another victim of Jun's tricks.

The film wraps up nicely with two epilogues, including a cameo from Richie Ren, making for a satisfying end to this delightful movie. "Honey Money Phony" is a feel-good film that leaves most viewers with a smile.

"Lin Qinglang" (Jin Chen) is on the phone to a man who is telling her that she must transfer ¥3000 or else her account will be shut down. As luck would have it, she's outside a branch of her bank so takes the call inside and quickly identifies a scammer. Rather than report him to the authorities, or shame him on social media, she makes him a proposition. He's not the first to have tried to con this rather naive woman out out of her money. Her ex-boyfriend managed to get ¥200,000 (about £22,000) from her before dumping her. If he can help her get that cash back, she will call it quits. "Ouyang Hui" (Sunny Sun) is quite a charming, charismatic young man and despite their mutual mistrust, they spend some time evaluating their pretty-boy mark "Zhang Zijun" (Wang Hao) - who has already moved onto to his next vulnerable victim. Their target runs a travel agency and so together with his wily uncle (David Wang) and her actress pal "Dong Xiaohui" (Li Xueqin) the pair set about orchestrating a complex sting operation to recoup her money and teach this man a lesson he will never forget. It's quite good fun this, and though maybe a little contrived it allows the engaging Sunny Sun to deliver a mischievous character that, even though fairly venal, proves to be quite a likeable rogue. The quickly paced scenarios are helped along by a cheery score, a few pop songs and, for a change, we don't use a constant stream of mobile phone texts to convey chunks of the dialogue. Of course, there's a burgeoning romance here but with some fun in a Ferrari, a disaster-prone holiday maker and some comedy trust issues, I found it quite an entertainingly daft caper.

One thing which draws me to contemporary PRC cinema is that on average, their films (at least the ones good enough to get overseas screenings) tend to be more grounded, more cynical and more interested in the workings of a society than the comparable Western film of a corresponding genre.

Here, this comparison is not so clear-cut - because the premise strongly (if unintentionally - the movies were released within 3 months of each other) echoes Josh Margolin's Thelma, which was also both a comedy about a scam and a film with a lot of amusing yet meaningful comments on its society. Relative to Thelma, it is actually Honey Money Phony which is more beholden to classic crime comedy tropes over social realism.

Quite often, it takes shortcuts in an attempt to score easy laugh lines - i.e. The classic metaphor of scammers as wolves and their prey as the sheep is reinforced with the SFX of howling and bleating played whenever the predator and the "unwitting" mark try their best. The humour in a scene with a gap-toothed character who sprays so much saliva a small dog in the room ends up drenched by the time he is done talking is rather beneath what I have come to expect from a PRC film.

At the same time, this is STILL a modern PRC film, so the social realist DNA is not absent, and the story can still be quite acidic when it counts. For instance, Lin has a properly realized backstory explaining how she had come to be in such a situation - including an ignored report of sexual harassment causing her to move to "Koo Aang" (renamed Macao) in the first place. The male scammer's backstory is surprisingly downbeat for the genre - not "dark" in the edgy sense, but simply a disappointingly plausible tale of parental neglect.

The film can also be vaguely compared to Now You See Me, in the sense that both involve scamming a single unsympathetic guy out of a lot of money, albeit by very different methods. The parallel becomes intentional when it also involves a scene with love locks on a bridge - but while the idea was played completely straight in Now You See Me, here Lin and her friend ask the male lead Ooyang and his uncle for help in lockpicking AWAY the love locks they left during the past relationships turned sour. It comes across as a very intentional counterpoint - and the cynicism is highlighted further when a photo vendor snaps the two leads and offers a locket with their photo. In response to their denials, he simply assumes they are adulterous and proposes a shielded locket with the photo hidden beneath a sliding cover.

I haven't spoken much about the core of the story, which is a classic crime comedy, but it's basically fine. Certainly more than a little predictable and overlong at times, but it still got more than enough laughs out of me. It helps that it invests attention to detail like the actual workings of bank transactions which lesser works often miss. The characters are all fun enough to follow and the epilogue thankfully does not forget about any one of them.

All in all, looking at it rationally this is probably the weakest and least substantial year 2024 PRC film I saw - but it still made me laugh a lot, and remains one of the better films I saw from that year.