A Horrible Movie

This week I watched A Beautiful Life (no, the Chinese one) by director Andrew Lau. This is the guy that did cinematography for City on Fire? What HAPPENED?

Basically a cop (you just can't write a movie that's NOT about cops, can you, Hong Kong?) named Fang Zhengdong (played by Ye Liu) runs into a drunk, Li Peiru (infamous porn star Shu Qi returns to the screen for another shitty role) who attaches herself to him until he is brow-beaten into liking her. Legend Anthony Wong is also in this movie, randomly becoming blind like halfway through with no explanation, but it doesn't make anything better.

I have been talking a lot lately about how Taiwanese and Chinese movies seem to fulfill certain gender roles, and one ideal of manhood is the caring, artistic guy who has a good job and saves the girl gone astray. This movie absolutely shattered my expectations with how EXACTLY FUCKING RIGHT I WAS. Shu Qi basically spends all her time annoying the fuck out of this poor guy who is just trying to prove his sensitivity by taking care of his slightly ret- I mean... really unique brother while all his cop friends bother him about not being married. About the time I was saying dryly to the screen, "This is the part where he saves her from being a worthless alcoholic by using love," the words actually poured out of every actors' mouth, in a row. "My grandma says I can save people." "You have to save me." And Anthony Wong's unbelievable line which he actually said with his mouth, "You always said you could save people, well here's a damsel in distress." Back the fuck off, movie, I get it!

But before he saves her, there is some other random crap thrown in to lengthen the movie to the Chinese standard of for fucking ever. Fang's demonstrate-how-great-a-guy-I-am slightly ret- err... retrospectively not that stupid brother falls in love with a mute girl and her mother lets her marry him despite his ret- uh, retelling of stories not being so good. Awww are you crying yet? Are the ratings going up? Shu Qi is crying for sure, which kicks off the longest drunk girl crying scene in a movie or even in real life, ever. There's probably a youtube video for this *clickety clack* yep.

So after some more drinking (I finish off a whole fifth of Johnnie Walker when I get home from work too, what?) They finally get together--but oh nooooo he has a brain condition. He had been dropping and forgetting shit up until now and finally he sees the doctor about it. Bad news.

I didn't really see what happened for a while because I swear to you I laughed out loud for like a minute and a half when he asked, "What does this mean?" and the doctor said, "You could be fine. Or...you could forget everything."

Yep. Well he does start to forget shit and she waits for him one day like a loyal saved little girl while he rides the bus around and suddenly is like, "FUCK that was my stop--HOURS AGO." He runs to her and apologizes because she has been waiting out in the cold but then...but THEN she says, "Don't worry, you gave me an angel. You gave me a little hand warmer...
...
...
...
...
You're going to be a father!" The end.












Wait, what? How much more time? MORE THAN HALF A FUCKING HOUR TO THIS MOVIE!?

Ratings:

Pointlessly Dragging On: 5 out of 5. This movie had all the symptoms of a writer that had absolutely no clue how to end it. Finally he chases a robber, getting flashbacks of that time he was a cop that led to him getting amnesia, and when he looks around the guy nails him with a brick. No, he's not dead, and you have to wait like ten more minutes for the absolutely expected "That hit to the head cured his amnesia!" thing. But he just sort of wakes up and the movie is over. Fuck that, I want the super predictable explanation at this point, because otherwise I waited though all that for NOTHING!

Anthony Wong Saving It: 0 out of 5. To put this into perspective, I like to see him as the Morgan Freeman of Asian cinema. But it didn't happen. He said some sage stuff or whatever but mostly sat there looking like, "What the hell is happening to my career?" For shame.

Catering to Gender Stereotypes: 5 out of 5. I just want to see a movie where Shu Qi doesn't play the immoral, sex-crazed lady that has to be saved by the good guy. But then again, single women are whooores, amirite?

Overall: 2 out of 5. Still better than most the shit I read. OH YEAH and the whole time I was like, "This Fang guy really reminds me of someone. What movie has he been in?" Turns out he's the Asian version of Ted from HIMYM. Bonus pointsss!


If you want to read about the Asian version of YOU visit amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall

(His brother is retarded)