A Chinese Odyssey
"In Michelle Saram's woodenness and Sonjia Kwok's robotic recital of the script, I could find something interesting to distract me a bit. I could at least find some comedic moments....This movie?..Sleeping throughout the movie is perhaps the best experience you can get out of this movie."
Title
A Chinese Odyssey 2002
Chinese Title
Tin Ha Mou Seung (Cantonese) which basically means if I were to say that to you, I would in effect say you're the only one, you can't be compared, there are no seconds, you're the one, THE GREATEST ONE.
Released In
2002 as a Chinese New Year release from Hong Kong
Cast-Character
I won't bother with the names of characters.
Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Vicky Zhou Wei, Faye Wong, Zhang Zhen, Athena Chu, Eric Kot
Plot
Faye the princess in the Ming Dynasty ran away from her palace dressed as a man. Considering her a perfect match for his lonely sister, Tony, a reformed bully, tried to match-make Faye and his sister, Vicki, to disastrous results as Faye fell for Tony without Tony realising Faye's a she and not a he. When the palace guards came to take Faye home, Tony mistakens Faye as the Emperor and went in search of Faye to make her marry his sister. Trapped in the vast wilderness, Faye and Toby bonded and Faye confessed that she was a "she" and she loved Tony. Tony who was once hurt by a rich man's daughter thought of himself as being not good enough for her but still accepted her love.
In the meantime, Faye's brother, Zhen the emperor, went in search of Faye and met Vicki in the process. Pretending to be a talented poor designer, Zhen realised Vicki loved him for who he was and not because he was an Emperor, a fact she did not know. Zhen vowed to marry her when the Queen Mother arrived and summoned Zhen and Faye (who had returned to the same place) into her make shift chamber.
Zhen who was always afraid to speak his mind in front of his mother, insisted on marrying Vicki and the Queen Mother, relieved that her son could make a decision of his own allowed the marriage. But she would not allow Faye to marry Tony, whom in her opinion, is a no good scoundrel thanks to his previous bad record unless he could wear a ring that if fated to be together, would stay put and if not, the ring would slip off the finger. Faye, believing in their love, urged him to wear the ring and the ring slipped from his finger. Dejected, he ran away and drowned his sorrow in alcohol.
Faye, in the meantime, because so grieved by her lost love, became insane and sat in the palace waiting for Tony to take her away. But her mother had other plans and decided to marry her off. Tony who met his old lover came to realise it was her old lover's father who rejected him, not her. Likewise, the princess never rejected him. The ring slipped because he himself was not convinced of their own love. Realising that, Tony went to Faye who, on her way to her marriage ceremony, was released to run away from her brother, Zhen who could not stop his mother's decision.
Tony saw Faye sitting quietly and realised Faye had been talking like he was. Faye had become him and playing along with her, he became her. Wearing the ring again, Tony's ring did not slip because he let go of himself and thought of her instead of himself. Faye realised what was happening and woke up from her deep depression and together, they lived happily ever after.
The end.
Comments
Please forgive my crude method of expressing my deepest feelings about this movie, made in none other than Hong Kong, the Chinese Hollywood.
What a bloody waste of my precious time to watch this junk of a senseless, plot-less, meaningless, over long and ever predictable movie with absolutely no substance whatsover!
To think that it had such a good cast, what a bloody disappointment!
Ok, now that I have expressed myself in a more layman's term, let me proceed to explain why oh why this movie is such a bad, worst, stupid, dumbfounding, meaningless piece of junk not worth one millisecond of your time. But wait! This is review is worth at least a minute of your time though.
Ok...how shall I begin..why it's such ....a.....bad...movie...
It's too long. In fact it's so long, the movie being less than 2 hours seem longer than "The Two Towers" and "Harry Potter 2" combined. I was getting impatient half way, but length is usually not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is simply this movie doesn't know what it wants to be.
It started out funny though, but 2 minutes into the movie when a man started to narrate how Faye escaped the forbidden city, I knew, I KNEW it would be junk.
There is a difference with being funny by adopting modern lingo into the costume drama world, if you do it right it would be brilliant, or at the very least, clever. I think The Lion Roars is one good example. If you do it wrong, it becomes so silly, it insults your intelligence. This being it.
But never mind! There's Tony Leung Chiu Wai, a dependable actor, if not too serious of an actor, to be taken seriously as a comedian, if you get my meaning. But he did well, with his character being such a big bad bully. Notwithstanding halfway a patrol man showed up dressing like the modern police, notwithstanding the logic of Tony's character running away from home because of lost love and yet the movie portrayed him at first as a bully. So he went back, to surprise surprise, his sister, Vicki. Now Vicki is a bonus to me because she is such a wonderful actress. But you know what, she is simply wasted BIG TIME in this piece of junk.
So ok, there's always Zhang Zhen, I was wondering how he can be a comedian, since everybody supposedly found his afro hairdo funny.
I didn't. Because apart from the morality issue with the character of Vicki so easily sleeping with the Emperor in disguise, as played by Zhen, the whole plot thing is so wafer thin, when some drama was inputted, it lends no credibility to the plot at all.
So ok, Tony had a lost love, his love for the princess was destined to be doomed unless salvaged in some ways, the princess pining for her love until she went insane.
All potentially good, and yet out of nowhere there's this annoying presence of Athena's character, whom at first was some mortal who turned out to be an immortal who turned out to be some guiding star for the princess.
If you read the above paragraphs, you would notice a consistent trend; this movie isn't consistent at all!
What do they want to do? Comedy? Then make one intelligent enough or at least, like Stephen Chow's movie, a simple comedy with slapstick humour of the highest degree disguised as an every man's ordinary movie. You want drama? Ok, make a drama. Why the need to add this immortal, that not even funny character, a tinge of lesbianism (without the characters knowing it), a bit of some afro stuff, more on some bedding a woman without marrying her stuff, a lot more about lost love ...
Where is the darn focus man? Is this movie supposed to be funny? Well the casting is ALL WRONG.
Faye Wong is a wonderful singer, an ok actress but never a comedian. She is pretty in here, very feminine and yet she's not funny.
Tony Leung is a wonderful dramatic actor, but a comedian? Ok, so he was Wai Siu Bo years before, so this man is capable of intelligent comedy. But slapstick humour such as this movie? A definite insult to this man's greatness as an actor.
Vicki Zhao is a brilliant actress, but in here she's dowdy, her voice is dubbed and her character so pitifully meaningless, I find it is such a waste of her talent and a disgrace she even said yes to this kind of movie. An actress with her beauty, her talent and her dedication to perfecting her art, she definitely makes bad choices, especially the one where she posed in Imperial Japanese flag in a magazine photo shoot. I thought she is so much more than what this movie could offer, she should be in movies like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Shanghai Knights (but I still want Fann Wong in there), Hero..those types of movies that are deserving of her talent. Not this piece of junk.
Athena Chu...what is the purpose of her role because it's not funny! It's like as if the director wanted to slot somebody famous somewhere for no apparent reason.
And last but not least, Zhang Zhen. The afro thing is not even funny, his character of a weak king who became stronger and more opinionated because of love could have been much better. His best line, in fact the movie's best line is when he said to his dowager mother, "What do you need me for? Since you're meddling into everything, let me leave this palace, YOU RUN THE COUNTRY". That was brilliant and then that was it. He's not funny, He's not even a good actor for heaven's sake.
Ask me again what's wrong with this movie. Ask!
Ok, the costume. The bloody costume. None whatsover. Same dress for Faye, same for everybody. The only nice thing is the cinematography, and the song sung by Faye and I think Tony.
But guess what? One scene where the song was playing and Faye and Tony's character bonded, and my god, the song was never ending man! Never ending until I switched channels. Then the same thing, where this time Faye sang the song with Tony like a musical, like Chinese opera. It could have been quite nice, if not for the fact by that time I didn't bother what happened anymore. The song went on and on and on and on and on and on ....sighhhhhh...waste my energy to even type how long it was.
You want my honest opinion? This movie is draggy. This movie is pointless. This movie is inconsistent. This movie does not have an aim, except perhaps to exploit the greatest talents of the Hong Kong movie industry and give us a piece of junk. Whoever made this movie must have thought they hit the jackpot with A list actors and singers agreeing to do this movie. The truth is this movie bombs big time. BIG TIME! Why would anyone want to pay to watch this junk? I watched it on TV for free and I still thought I was cheated.
Take my advice; there are better movies. This is not a movie for any fans or non fans. This is a movie for people who has absolutely nothing to do, not even death came a calling.
If I had to choose between watching a movie with Michele Saram and Sonija Kwok in it (like A Step Into The Past) and watching this movie, give me Michelle Saram man! Give her to me. In Michelle Saram's woodenness and Sonjja Kwok's robotic recital of the script, I could find something interesting to distract me a bit. I could at least find some comedic moments.
This movie?
Sleeping throughout the movie is probably the best experience you can out of this movie.
Avoid this at all cost.
