Baak bin sing gwan

This is by far the funniest movie I have seen. i saw it Sunday morning at a film marathon called All Freakin' Night. It was halarious. We were presented with the version entitled "the sixty million dollar man" the basic story was as follows; I don't know, All i remember was a man, a woman, an albert einstein looking asian guy, a giant tube of toothpaste, students with paintball guns, and laughing my @$$ off. The first subtitled film i have watched all the way through, I started watching the Subtitled version of "crouching tiger, hidden dragon" but turned it off less than half way through and just rented the dubbed version.

Sing (Stephen Chow) is a spoilt snotty nosed brat living in Hawaii. He spends his time pulling pranks on hapless friend Siu-Fu (Lee Kin-yan) and his butler Tat (Ng Man-Tat). The arrogant, egotistical jerk is one of Chow's stock characters (see also 'The God of Cookery' (1996)) who experiences a tragic downfall and is humbled by his experience. Sing is pursued by the Triads, blown up and reconstituted as a cyborg by mad scientist Chang (Elvis Tsui). Conveniently, Chang's niece Chung-Chung (Gigi Leung) is the ugly duckling that flowers into Sing's love interest.

Expect the same Stephen Chow brand of slapstick comedy, puns and wordplay, caricature and vulgarity that define his unique sense of Hong Kong humour. But the film is less an original film than Stephen Chow's parody of contemporaneous Western films ('Terminator 2: Judgment Day' (1991), 'The Mask' (1994), 'Pulp Fiction' (1994)). Chow really plays his own version of 'The Mask' half fused with the Terminator. But unlike the veritable walking weapon T-1000, Chow is something more of a George Foreman grill. The gag is that he can only change his cyborg form to household appliances. Much to my delight, about halfway into the film there is even an almost shot-by-shot remake of the dance number in 'Pulp Fiction', with hilarious results. Although, given the fact that Hong Kong audiences watched very few Hollywood films during the 90s, one wonders how much of this film can be legitimately called parody and how much is simply Chow's gratuitous repackaging of Hollywood for Hong Kong audiences. Nonetheless, the Hong Kong centric focus of the film reveals itself in the final showdown at the end, with Chow playing up an in-joke that few audiences outside of Hong Kong would fully appreciate.

The film is awfully dated when it comes to special effects. One gets the sense that many of the situations in the plot were contrived to show off those special effects. These kinds of special effects were awfully dated even for the 90s - when one recalls the kinds of special effects wonders that were being weaved on screen by Hollywood - what was director Raymond Yip thinking? Nonetheless, if you can ignore the campy special effects, there are enough laughs here to warrant a viewing.

I have always been a big fan Stephen Chow's earlier works(mid 80's to late 90's) as his slapstick comedies never failed to make me laugh, and I am the type of person who usually don't laugh too easily when watching comedies.

The main setting where the film was being shot is in Hawaii, I think. The story revolves around a rich playboy who gets blown into pieces by a group of mafia when he got into trouble messing with the lady of the boss. That is the point when the plot gets ridiculously funny. Most of the jokes do not make much sense, and that is where this movie takes off.

The partially dead playboy was resurrected by a white-haired Einstein like professor for $6000 since the dad couldn't pay for the expenses of the real operation, sixty million dollars. That is where the title of this movie was taken from. Well, you guessed it right. From sixty million dollars to six thousand dollars. A whopping reduction in operation costs that resulted in a less-than-perfect resurrected form.

The playboy can now turn into various forms as he wishes and consumes batteries as his main diet. The funniest aspect of this movie is IMO the imperfect state of his penis which has been substituted with a shower hose. The first time when he wanted to take a pee and found out about his penis, when he took the hose in his hand and said "What is this ah" before he fainted, I nearly choke on my popcorn. Damn that is hilarious.

Later on, he got a post as a school teacher in an institution that was full of problematic students. Things just get crazier from there.

To summarize, Stephen Chow is the Asian Jim Carrey with the jokes taken to more ridiculous levels.

I've seen a couple of Hong Kong movies through the years but this is something to write a note on. It defies synopses so I just give you the recipe: Frankenstein+Pulp Fiction+Class of 1999+The Mask (with Jim Carrey)+The Terminator. Mix this well with some tried-and-true HK-style slapstick (the Mad Mission type) and you got this movie. The plot is almost non-existent, just one set-piece comes after another.

Originality is not an issue with this movie (well, maybe a water tap for penis is something new), but nevertheless I laughed myself silly watching it.

Try this on a gloomy day!

I appreciate slap-stick and some of SC's other movies (God of Cookery, Justice my Foot, Hail the Judge, Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer and others) but I just couldn't handle this movie.

I was just too goofy. His transformations, the abusive HS Students, the ugly duckling, the bad hair professor but at least the women looked fine and the QT parody of Pulp Fiction was kinda funny. But overall this movie was a little too strange for me. I may try to watch it again with a few under my belt.

I do like Steph Chow and his band of actors. Maybe all this film was a spring board for greater works.

"No More Soccer!!!!!"