Forever Fever

This is a charming and touching Singaporean combo of STRICTLY BALLROOM and Saturday NIGHT FEVER with bits of ENTER THE DRAGON (!) thrown in for good musical kung fu measure and pleasure. I am sure you never thought in a million years that you would read that all in the one sentence. Well, all in the one film makes it a delightful mix. Lurching in and out of English Spinglish and various Asian dialects FOREVER FEVER has a wonderful sense of itself as both a urban musical and an Asian romantic drama. Like Bollywood films pinching plot and images from various western films, this low budget Malaysian production manages to lift whole plot ideas and reverse them, and then even chuck in some PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO cinematic off-the-screen advice and ideas from viewer to screen actor. Well made and with a terrific soundtrack FOREVER FEVER could easily be remade in 2006 as a regular Anglo/American/Aussie film and succeed all over again. FLOWER DRUM SONG it is not.

I checked this out from the library - I figured, what the heck, it's free, and I'll get a campy laugh from it. But the movie is in fact sweet & affectionate. OK so the guy playing Travolta who walks off the screen looks nothing like him & is actually doing a slightly Southern accent. The lead actor (playing Hock) looks a lot like Bruce Lee and turns out to be a good dancer as well as great at kung fu. Nobody has yet mentioned a minor subplot, of the idolized older brother - a med student who needs money for a sex-change operation. The father disavows the med student son in anger. The 70s costumes are good fun and I like the kid sister character who's hooked on romance novels. It reminded me in a way of "Strictly Ballroom" (a much better Baz Lehrman film than "Moulin Rouge" BTW!) And everybody's speaking quite good English - no terrible dubbing! So check this one out & enjoy.

i saw this movie over the summer. then i saw saturday night fever for class. while not an exact remake, there are a lot of similarities between the two films. the brother that becomes the family pariah. the disco contest. room decor. but there are a couple of crucial differences that make seeing this movie worthwhile. if nothing else, the kung fu fight scene performed in disco attire.

"Forever Fever" which I saw under the title "That's the Way I Like It" is an entertaining, but somewhat amateurish film from Singapore.

The year is 1977. Ah Hock is a working stiff, who dreams of owning a motorcycle, but he can't afford one. So, he decides to enter a dance competition (disco of course) in order to win enough money to buy one. There are predictable twists and turns, and a couple of unusual side stories, but all in all it's a nice movie.

On it's own this film is as good as anything Hollywood puts out. But if you understand the dynamic that exists between Asian traditions and Western Cultural influence, like there is in Singapore, that pushes the story over the edge into the realm of great film. Most Americans (I am one, Irish and Norwegian, but aware of the situation there) won't appreciate the subtleties and the subtext, but it IS wonderful.