Odisseia Chinesa

OK, here's another Chinese New Year offering that almost slipped through our fingers. The festive period has come and gone, but better late than never (for a review). Judging from what this film has to offer, it's no loss if you missed it in the midst of all that festive bingeing.

THE ESCAPE...Royal siblings (played by Faye Wong & Chang Chen) plotting their escape.

The story is set in ancient China and centres on two pairs of siblings. Faye Wong and Chang Chen are of royal blood while Tony Leung and Vicky Zhao Wei play commoners from a distant village.

The emperor and princess find life behind palace walls too mundane, and are always plotting their escape. Most of the time, the Empress Dowager and the palace guards foil their plans. Eventually, only the princess manages to escape, disguised as a man.

In comes the other set of siblings. Lung (Leung), the village bully, is an uncouth and rough man whose ambition in life is to just be a drifter. He has a younger sister, Phoenix, a tomboyish girl who operates a small restaurant and is looking for her true love. COMMONERS...Meet Lung (Leung, left), the village bully and his tomboyish sister, Phoenix (Vicky Zhao Wei).

Things get complicated when the princess arrives at the village and meets the siblings. She is attracted to Lung and vice versa. This confuses Lung (she is disguised as a man, remember?), so he sets out to match make his sister with his new friend. At the same time, Phoenix is also attracted to the princess.

The situation gets messier when the prince manages to find his way to the village, where he soon falls for Phoenix.

As a whole, there is no smooth flow to the story being told. Firstly, the flick jumps from one subplot to the next as and when it pleases. Besides that, mindless gags and jokes are carelessly thrown in and even though they do elicit laughter, the constant barrage of lame jokes gets a little tiring after an hour or so.

In a tale like this, the romance between the characters feels like fluff. So when the time calls for some supposedly heart-wrenching moments, it doesn't have much of an impact on the viewer.

You can't really develop any sympathy for the characters when everything is one big joke, can you? You tend to expect that the next moment will make you laugh. But sadly, genuinely funny scenes are few and far between. What you get mostly is silly humour. FAIR PRINCESS...Faye Wong looking absolutely lovely when not dressed up as a man.

Tony Leung seems to be comfortable taking on a comic role like this. Noted for his performances in artsy and serious films like In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express Leung proves that he's a versatile actor. Chang Chen, who is famous for his role in Crouching Tiger, also gingerly tackles his role as the emperor who sports an Afro.

Vicky Zhao Wei (My Fair Princess) is as adorable as ever with her huge, expressive eyes, while Faye Wong is OK as the very feminine looking man. But a good cast does not guarantee a good production if the material they have to work with is bad.

A friend summed up the movie very nicely with one word. When asked what she thought about the flick, she replied: `Nonsense.'

I agree.

My friend an I were holding our stomachs and laughing so hard tears were coming out. If you liked "God of Cookery", "Forbidden City Cop", "Shaolin Soccer" or any of Stephen Chow's movies you're gonna love this, even though it is not one of his films. Takes me back to all the fun stuff that was coming out of HK a decade ago. Sure some things get lost in translation but if that was a problem for you then you might not like it. If you're into Hong Kong goofiness and slapstick period pieces you'll eat this up. The silly plot twists and gender misunderstandings make for some funny and awkward moments that keep your attention and the timing is spot on to tickle the funny bone. Great for laughs.

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.

Chinese Odyssey is a thoroughly pleasant romantic comedy, captained by an extremely attractive cast of actors, and accompanied by delightful music. The plot is lifted right off of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and pulled off with remarkable wit and flair. It is certainly the best written Chinese comedy I've seen, and the gags are as much in the words and situations as in the visual setting and the facial mimicry.

The movie starts off as intense comedy, with hilariously effective anachronisms strewn about. Gradually, it becomes more and more serious about the love story, which is indeed genuinely moving, thanks to the brilliant cast, particularly Vicki Zhao and Faye Wong, who are both stunning-looking.

(Vicki Zhao is the kung fu girl from Shaolin Soccer; she is great; she can play anything, from emotionally devastated to deliciously sexy. And while I haven't seen beautiful songstress Faye Wong before, she looked very familiar to me, probably because she resembles Sandrine Holt a great deal. I also see in her filmography that she is in "2046", which is one of the next movies I plan to watch and review at IMDb.)

Chinese Odyssey is so beautifully shot, and stars such beautiful people, that one has to watch it twice; once to read the subtitles and once to look at people's faces! :-)

I don't know why everyone keeps calling this movie "nonsense" - it's not nonsense! It's the Monty Python- and Umberto Ecoesque humorous juxtaposition of elements with little or no mutual relevance! It's the highest form of comedy!

Anyway, this is an extremely good, pleasant and funny movie, with no negative elements that I can think of. 9 out of 10.

In the Ming Era, Emperor Chang Chen and his sister, Princess Faye Wong, are anxious to escape the Forbidden City and the Dowager Empress Rebecca Pan. Finally, Miss Wong does so. Disguised as a man, she comes to the restaurant run by Wei Zhao and her bullying, wandering brother Tony Cheung. Cheung and the Empress fall in love, but he doesn't realize she is a girl, so he tries to marry her to his sister. They wander back towards the capital, he finds out the truth. Meanwhile, Chen goes out with a guard to search for his sister. He comes to the restaurant, and he and Miss Zhao fall in love, but she's still smitten with his sister, and he's worried she will only love him for being Emperor, so he pretends to be a wandering fashion designer.

Jeffrey Lau has directed one of those movies turned out by the Chinese film industry which crosses all sorts of genre boundaries, and includes magical bunnies, fights involving non-existent forms of martial arts, and lots of gags. So many gags, including gender-bending gags. At its heart it pretends that it's a mediation on the meaning and means of true love. Perhaps. I found it more than satisfactory, even brilliant, in its variety and extremes of funny bits.