To find out if it's playing near you, click here.Baseball team, Amber Valley, Alberta, ca.
Best games of 2016 that youve never heard of movie#
This is the sad reality of foreign films inĪmerica today: the domestic marketplace is so hopelessly biased in favor of English-language films, most of them produced in the United States, that the second most popular movie in the world is treated as if it doesn't even exist. Had already gotten positive reviews-all pegged to its release inĪsia-and that Sony didn't expect it to interest many people, outside of Chinese or Chinese-American film fans. Screenings for US press, or even send out an email alerting them to the film's impending release. Rep told me that his company hadn't thought to set up advanced Three of the four Sony representatives I spoke with didn'tĮven know that the company was releasing "The Mermaid." The fourth Who aren't already part of the Chinese diasporicĬommunity. Ought to be ashamed for keeping such a good film from American viewers (In theory the film is distributed by Asia Releasing, a subsidiary that handles the release of Asian films in the US and Canada, but the print I saw had a plain old Sony logo in front of it.) Shattered domestic box office records in China andīecame the #2 movie in the world, after " Deadpool." Its American release is an afterthought for one reason: mismanagement by its American distributor, Sony Corporation of America. Chow's "Shaolin Soccer" and "Kung Fu Hustle" were international hits, and he's a mega-star You may be wondering, If this movie is so bizarre, so wonderful, so funny, why haven't I heard of it? The answer to that question is infuriating. Naive woman could stumble into a romance with a man she wants toĪssassinate. Lin thankfully makes you believe that such a Routine involving a merman penis and a routine about roastĬhickens and cunnilingus. I've seen aįair number of Chow films, but his sexual or violent humor always takes Of humor always tends to be more extreme than you expect. Lin's apparent sincerity works wonders since Chow's sense Notion that Shan's sincere when she flashes Xiu Luan and he You believe that Shan is as awkward as she seems. Of comedians, including Shan's fellow sea-people, all earn laughs, but Lin has the unenviable task of making
That's part of his character's wisp-thin appeal: he's instantly recognizable as a fake who nevertheless wants to make good.Įxaggerated performance makes Liu Xuan a likable antihero, Lin's turn as He's a phony, as is made apparent by his paste-on pencil mustache. Shan shows up, wearing smeared make-up and ugly rubber weights toĭisguise her fins, everybody knows that Liu Xuan will still chase after Flashy clothes and "Cribs"-style parties,Ĭomplete with poolside babes and decades-old wine, are the hallmarks of He's rich, but "low-class," in the words of Shan's spiteful, mega-rich But Liu Xuan can easily be read as Chow's stand-in: Not-so-) exaggerated version of his petulant public person here, as he "The Mermaid" has many hallmarks of Chow's working-class-egotist-makes-good Tasked with avenging her fellow cryptids by seducing and killing him.īut there's a problem: Shan and Liu Xuan like each other. Since Liu Xuan has a weakness for the ladies, Shan is Mer-people, led by spiteful Octopus ( Show Luo) and naive mermaid This includes an understandably pissed-off community of The plot: Jerkish tycoon Liu Xuan ( Deng Chao) has made a ton of money off of sonar technology that incidentally murders all nearby If you'd told me this in advance of my first viewing of the film, on opening night in a Manhattan theater, I wouldn't have believed it, but the sound of a sold-out audience laughing from start to finish is the surest metric of whether a comedy works.
In fact nearly all of the jokes of every kind work. Keen eye for composition, and his comic timing makes even the goofiest, broadest jokes work. It's a gag machine with gears that never stop turning.Ĭhow's broad, at times bawdy sense of humor, is tempered by a Herman as "a simple thing to hang a bunch of stuff on" couldĪpply to this movie. "The Mermaid" is a romantic-comedy fantasy from actor-director-producer Stephen Chow (" Kung Fu Hustle," " Shaolin Soccer") about a billionaire who falls in love with a mermaid. It doesn't matter if you've never seen a Chinese It doesn't matter if you've never heard of the director. It doesn't matter if you don't like subtitles.
0 kommentar(er)
