Movie Review: The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說之法海

Snowboarding has historically always been a part of China.This film was the other half of the  33D Invader/蜜桃成熟時33DDouble Feature Saturday a while back. I know it took me a long time to add this one.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

In 1993, Tsui Hark made Green Snake, with Maggie Cheung Man Yeuk and Joey Wong Cho Yin as a pair of sisters who, although they were snake demons, wanted (to differing degrees) to understand and live as humans. Vincent Zhao Wen-Zhou played an unswerving, driven, and flawed monk whose sole purpose in life, it seemed, was to destroy the snakes.

Visually dazzling (though not without some budgetary-restriction rough edges), hyperbolic and at times visually/cinematically breathtaking, Green Snake is a film that has engendered long-term adulation as well as criticism, and provides audiences with a wealth of topics to discuss.

Of particular relevance is the obvious allegory to China embodied by the monk who would rather destroy the world than let the snakes go; China had made it amply clear before the 1984 Declaration that they would rather reclaim a devastated and empty Hong Kong than allow it to retain any vestige of British control.

Well, it’s not 1993 any more. It’s 2011. The rules have changed, along with the times, the flags, and the phones.

And the films.

I was one of the apparent few who was not deeply offended by the concept, much less execution, of the recent China remakeof A Chinese Ghost Story. I enjoyed myself, and as rare as that is these days, I’ll take it where and when I can get it.

I knew that The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說之法海 wasn’t going to be great cinema going in.

The main investor is Yang Zi, who directed Chase Our Love, a film so bad that people I know with advanced degrees in filmmaking can’t figure out what the f@#$ it means.

Put this where the sun doesn’t shine, Kozo!

The fact that he’s also Eva Huang’s ‘benefactor’ and she is the lead female in  The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說之法海 is strictly coincidental.

Guess where this hand has been?

Good question. Why don’t we ask his wife???

Yeah, he’s married.

Just not to Eva.

This isn’t anywhere near as bad as Woody Allen, I concede, but it’s still… gross.

If he really cared about her he’d fix that f@#$ing eye.

Obviously, Eva Huang’s eye distracts me severely.

And yes, I admit that it is an inherently mean, selfish, cheap shot to take, but I’m just being honest. I simply cannot concentrate on anything else when her face is onscreen. It drives me batsh*t.

Which, let’s face it, is walking distance for me.

And to be honest, she is nowhere near the most annoying female in the cast.

Because the other snake is Charlene Choi.

The things you see when you haven’t got your gun…

Charlene Choi is, of course, half of Twins, that downright creepily asexual (at least pre-Edisongate) Cantoschlock duo. Their appeal seems based on some kind of perennial adolescence.

Which, on a woman of 29, looks sad, stupid, and gross.

**Take, for example, her approach to playing the Green Snake character, previously played by Maggie Cheung Man Yuk:

“Her performance is more devilish and feminine, my Green Snake is happy and cute.”**

Really? Well, f@#$ you too. Because your character’s very un-cute behavīor caused me to blurt out the acronym for Civilians Under Naval Training in a public cinema.

I was ashamed of saying it, but I wasn’t unjustified.

Who knows? Maybe, as Kozo points out, The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說 was really intended for kids, since that’s how a lot of it plays. So within that context, maybe its okay for Charlene Choi to cheapen and trivialize a character whose precedent is, frankly, iconic.

Because it’s the 21st Century and Maggie Cheung married a foreigner anyway. #Twinning!

Then again, it would take a child’s eye not to notice that the CGI used in The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說is pretty shoddy.

It looks about 10 years behind the curve.

Though to be fair, it is used to endow Eva Huang and Charlene Choi with something they don’t possess.

No, not tails and scales.

T*ts.

I guess that’s for Dad to look at. He probably doesn’t want to look at Jet Li.

Because its m iddle aged Jet Li.

He plays a Buddhist monk who wants to capture the snakes. He is also mentoring a young monk, sharing his hard-earned wisdom:

“Chicks can’t hold the smoke… That’s what it is!”

Not that he doesn’t do well enough to warrant watching. It’s just difficult watching him now because you are reminded of  watching him then. The young Jet Li is gone, and we all miss him.

Even Jet Li misses him:

Tempting demonesses performing the dreaded 合同義務.

But Li’s seniority here is a blessing, if for no other reason than it shows how much an actor can grow. This is shown more vividly, perhaps, by the othermale actors, who simply cannot compete with him.

“ Did you touch my hoes???”

Raymond Lam Fung plays herbalist Xu Xian, who falls in love with the White Snake.

Too bad sharks aren’t historically part of China.

He falls in love with her after being shamelessly manipulated and deceived, but then again weddings are big business in China.

“穿我老婆的婚紗禮服. 挑逗!”

Besides, to some extent he brings it on himself. After all, he is a sorcerer (or at least a doctor), and therefore part of the system of oppression by superstition that the Party seeks to eradicate!

Somehow in China, herbal medicine constitutes sorcery. CSARFT FTW!

In fact, in China this film has a different English title. Because there are no sorcerers in China!

Actually, it’s crap. In any language.

Smitten with her sorcerer, White Snake takes him home to meet her family, in a scene that reinforces the idea that The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說is a children’s film.

Or made for Mao’s grandson.

Or people who dress like this:

Sometimes physical violence is justifiable.

The scene, of a group of spirits who struggle mightily (and unsuccessfully) with retaining human form left me feeling, perhaps unsurprisingly, insulted.

It’s just … stupid.

The only useful thing you take from it is the concrete knowledge that Miriam Yeung must be really f@#$ing broke.

你忘恩! 我們一起拍了一張照片!

Lam Suet isn’t rich, but then again Lam Suet is Lam Suet.

所以是你的母親.

I don’t know who Jiang Wu is. But I know I don’t want to know.

This was funnier when Mickey Rooney did it. And that wasn’t funny at all.

Which would also be my first reaction to Wen Zhang, though I blame the film more than him.

吃屎.

Then again, when the best thing that can be said about an actor’s presence in a film is that he kind of reminds you of Chapman To, well… I think you see my point.

他媽的你和你的觀點!

No one mentioned to me that this was a kid’s movie. The marketing didn’t seem to imply it. It just turned out that way.

Which I found out the hard way.

That’s also the only way anyone with a 3 digit IQ will get through this film.

Jet Li says he only makes movies to fund his charities. I suppose that makes his participation understandable. I mean, I can’t imagine why else he would be involved with this mess.

I had hoes allover me!

The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說之法海 makes absolutely no contribution to cinema, let alone mankind.

Well, maybe one.

Until **The Sorcerer and the White Snake/白蛇傳說之法海 came along, this was the cheesiest Whitesnake you could find:**

A special Thank You/Explanation goes to   Jaymee, who made a point of saying she really enjoys my photo captions. I work hard on them, and no one ever seemed to notice before (other than occasionally not getting the joke or not realizing there was one). My love for irreverent captions is likely based, and no doubt was greatly nurtured byCreem , a rock and roll magazine popular in my youth. Their seeming inability to write a straight, serious caption gave me a lot of laughs, inspiration, and a feeling that I was not the only person who saw the world in an apparently odd way.