Movie Review: Black Comedy/黑色喜劇

God help us.Black Comedy/黑色喜劇 is  painfully unfunny.

Wilson Chin directed it. He directed all three Lan Kwai Fong movies. And Summer Love Love.

But I watched Black Comedy/黑色喜劇 anyway.

Wong Jing wrote and produced this movie, so I thought I might like it. Say what you will about him, he can write movies that cater to his audience and usually entertain me. He’s been at it for thirty-plus years, so he’s learned a lot.

On the other hand, after several years spent directing, Wilson Chin doesn’t seem to have learned a f@#$ing thing.

Which is not to say he isn’t innovative. He’s not afraid to break new ground. I never thought a movie could drag in the first ten minutes, but Black Comedy/黑色喜劇 does.

That may be a cinematic first.

Movies like this make me wonder if maybe I really don’t understand the local audience. Because as I groaned my way through it, people in the audience were laughing. Maybe not a lot, but a hell of a lot more than I was.

Of course, anything above none is, by definition, a lot more.

The scenes dragged, and a lot of the time it was because the set-up of the joke was so tediously obvious that you knew where it was going. Then the scene seemed to take f%#&ing forever to get to the unfunny payoff of the unfunny premise.

There’s telegraphing, and then there’s Wilson Chin.

If there’s a black tie banquet with a big barrel of human sh*t in the room, is it any f@#$ing surprise that someone’s going to end up in the barrel of shit?

I mean, banquets have barrels of human shit in them all the time, so maybe I’m just being picayune.

Like when I think that speech impediments aren’t funny. I’m just being a tightass.

But to be fair, there were a few things I laughed at that I was supposed to laugh at.

Wong Cho Lam, which is Chinese for flaming metrosexual, plays a bumbling cop named To Kei Fung.

You know, Johnnie To.

I get the feeling the opening of the film was a parody of The Mission. But I also get the feeling Wilson Chin hasn’t watched The Mission in a long time.

Or maybe at all.

This idiot cop has a demanding girlfriend, played by Kimmy Tong, which is Chinese for “I don’t know why people think I’m pretty either.”

He ends up making a pact with the Devil, or, more accurately, the Devil’s son, played by Chapman To.

I know how he feels.

The Devil is played by Yum Yum Shaw, and she was funny. Especially the trident cigarette holder.

I laughed out loud when Jim Chim’s character got called a sissy. 

There were some funny one-liners about local politics and politicians, and about movies. Though two years later, the Pop Rocks jokes have outlived their usefulness.

And comedic value.

The best thing about this movie was that it ended.

The second best thing was a joke about a TV program called River of Blood being sponsored by Elegant brand female napkins.

That gives you an idea of the level of quality of this film.

I realize I haven’t told you much about the movie.

I’d rather forget that I saw it.