Tian xia wu shuang

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.

This film is produced by Wong Kar Wai. There are a lot of inside jokes and spoofs on Wong's earlier movies. My favourite is the one where the Tony and Faye talk about distance. This is a re-make of their 'Chungking Express' encounter. I was in stitches. If one is not familiar with Wong's work, the movie will therefore be labelled as nonsense.

Ok, what was good about it? All 4 leads were perfect, the settings were gorgeous, the costumes were amazing, the story unfolded not quite as I thought it would, the witty one-liners got some good belly-laughs, and yes, that singing/dancing opera piece had me in stitches when in any other film it would get turned off. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I had a good laugh watching this, now that the DVD is out I'll be ordering it. 9 out of 10!

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.

The thing that struck me most about this movie is its radiance. The music alone will tell you that this movie is about having fun.

The comedy is perhaps a little bit questionable, depending on you're tastes. Sometime's it's just simple verbal jokes, and at other times, it's just completely random. I found the randomness to be a little too weird to be funny at times, but most of the humor is fine.

My favorite scenes are the ones depicting pure enjoyment. One scene in particular that strikes me is the spoof of Chinese opera. Faye is singing, beautifully, as usual, and making lots of similies and such, and Tony just says a bunch of stupid stuff (probably because his character is uneducated). My favorite lines being: Faye: See those geese in the middle of the pond, enjoying each other's company like we are. Tony: Today they swim, Tomarrow they roast. Roast goose is truly delicious.

Often times in a movie about love, the ones that are remembered are the ones where the characters are creative in showing their love. I mean, it's not easy to give that kind of emotion to the audience with characters they have only known for two hours.

It's even harder to give the audience the enjoyment of being in the company of someone really fun. This song and dance, as well as other scenes in the movie accomplish this very well. While they're doing the ridiculous dances, Faye can be seen close to, if not bursting into laughter. The director and the actors really looked like they had great fun with this film, and that translates onto the audience.

The formulaic aspect of the movie, or the part i'm not so crazy about is the last 15 minutes or so. While i don't mind the plot's development, i feel the character reactions were a bit exaggerated. Both Faye and Tony end up going crazy, literally. There needn't be such an exaggeration to depict the sadness of the characters. In fact, that shouldn't even be a focus of a movie of pure fun like this.

It does ultimately end on a happy note, which is quite nice. In the end, i do find something special about this movie. Nothing really matches the pure enjoyment i feel from this movie. Every time i think of the drunken song, i can't help but smile. There are some parts of the movie which aren't quite as wonderful, but it's definitely worth you're time.