Movie Review: Hardcore Comedy/重口味

I watched this movie at The Dynasty this weekend.

Because The Die Nasty is 40% cheaper than other cinemas.

I was interested in the film; Hardcore Comedy/重口味 is another 3-part film, like Tales From the Dark 1&2.

And it was Category III.

So there’s probably no Mandarin dub.

The film is made up of three short stories that tenuously intersect at a single point, and we are shown this intersection more than three times.

Because ‘tenuous’ is in the dictionary between tedious and terrible.

I was confused by the movie’s opening; it seemed to start with its own trailer.

But it was just the opening of the movie.

In the first segment, “Shocking Wet Dreams,” two computer geeks who can’t get a dorm room end up living in building housing a number of ‘one-woman brothels.’

One of their neighbors is Bowie, a kind-hearted young woman who often cooks dinner for the working girls downstairs.

Her neighbors are more fun to watch than yours.

She is played well by Michelle Wai, who looks especially nice surrounded by women whose wardrobe  comes from .

Bowie is a kept woman whose boyfriend is not only a corrupt cop but also a member of the Slapaho tribe, leading to the seemingly requisite display of chivalry and technology that only a lovelorn geek can muster.

Cue a clumsy lurch towards romance.

And hookers playing drums with dildos.

But wait.

The cop has vowed revenge.

威震八方

What’s a geek to do?

Become a budget superhero.

Batman had the Batcave.

These two have Sham Shui Po.

If nothing else, I have to admit that Terence ‘Siu Fai’ Chui didn’t annoy me as much as he usually does.

I had a few good laughs.

One of the best being the skinny guy from 33D Invader playing a hooker:

Greatest anti-prostitution PSA ever.

I remember thinking that the women playing the hookers really couldn’t act.

But then I thought that they probably aren’t any worse than if they had gotten hookers to act, so in a sense it made them better.

Or worse. I’m not really sure.

The second segment is called “Run on drugs.”

It tells the story of a young man (William Chan) who spends a night selling hallucinogenic mushrooms.

  He samples his wares, leading to even more adventures.

He meets a young woman (Dada Chan) who, like Bowie, has a boyfriend of less than stellar moral fiber.

I hope the purse matches the hat.

I love the way movies seem to circumvent reality by doing away with the waiting period between the time someone takes drugs and the time said drugs begin to affect him or her.

Not all drugs induce immediate responses.

From what I’ve read.

But so what?

Verisimilitude is cinematic tedium, and this movie already has plenty of that.

What if they made a movie about people you can’t give a sh*t about?

If you want to be farcical that’s fine, but realize that one casualty of farce is the audience’s emotional interaction/attachment to your characters.

You can’t have your cake and give it a love story too.

If you expect me to care about your characters or get drawn into their story, don’t make them irredeemable f@#$wits.

Because hey, if I was dealing drugs, I’d drive a pink car too.

If anyone gets busted by a female cop with an anomalous fur hat and wildly fake eyebrows, why should I care?

I’m sure I’m missing some sort of reference with her appearance, but I sincerely doubt knowing it would redeem that scene, much less the segment.

I suppose in Hong Kong’s Puritan-esque society, it is transgressive to make a love story about two people who meet because of drug dealing.

But such relationships are essentially doomed from the start by their very circumstances.

From what I’ve read.

But hey, why wouldn’t he let a girl he just met while dealing drugs (that both of them partook of), who just dumped her cheating boyfriend less than 12 hours ago, move in with him and her mother, who already told her she would relish in torturing a daughter-in-law?

That’s a hilarious premise for a movie where we get to watch that situation go t*ts-up (and it would), but somehow I got the impression we were supposed to think it was a real love story.

The segment wasn’t a total wash for me; I enjoyed the scene with Siu Yum Yum, if only because it is such an unsettling scene.

The third (and thankfully final) segment is “Can’t Stop the Killing,” wherein a womanizing sushi chef needs to pay off a gambling debt by fulfilling a contract on a gangster.

Like most of us would do, the would-be-assassin embarks on a retrospective wander through his past relationships, both familial and personal.

He looks up his old girlfriend, whom he had mistreated before she went to Canada.

Hey, Hong Kong girls love compulsive-gambling womanizing hitmen who broke their heart.

He’d have been better off with the dope-gobbling bimbo from the previous segment.

But why should logic interfere in the narrative?

Maybe because we’re expected, at some point, to buy into this romance and therefore treat these characters seriously.

Which would have been a lot easier if they weren’t such overblown caricatures.

Don’t make your antagonist a rainbow-haired flaming metrosexual with a voice like a woman unless you’re trying to make a joke out of it.

If that is what you were doing, please remember that jokes are supposed to be funny.

Here’s a free bit of advice: if you tell us something that happens in a line of dialogue, don’t give us a protracted and seemingly interminable flashback intended to get us to wonder about an incident that you already told us the outcome of.

Here’s another: don’t give me a (different) flashback only two minutes after the scene you’re flashing back to.

Or a dance scene.

Hardcore Comedy/重口味 often seemed too cute for its own good.

My biggest problem with this movie, and many similar movies, is that I get the impression the filmmakers are very pleased with themselves, and/or think they’re very smart, clever, witty, artistic and skilled.

But they’re not.

It’s not a good sign when your movie reminds me of anything involving Jim Chim.

Because I can’t stand him.

This movie has its moments of mirth and entertainment.

I can’t say I didn’t laugh.

But I can easily say that where the characters were concerned I didn’t care about them, and I felt that at times the movie wanted me to.

How’s it feel to want?