Movie Review: Mr. & Mrs. Player/爛滾夫鬥爛滾妻

Mission Impossible: Get Smart

I’ll watch anything Wong Jing makes.

Except a sextape.

But never mind that.

Mr. & Mrs. Player/爛滾夫鬥爛滾妻  is the sequel to Mr. & Mrs. Gambler.

How exactly it’s a sequel I am not sure, but it had Mr. & Mrs. in the title, and it has Chapman To, and it’s directed by Wong Jing.

Close enough for government work.

Speaking of which…

Chapman To plays… Chapman To.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s as funny as ever, playing Carson, a feng shui master with the moral fiber of a terminally ill pimp.

But he’s still very obviously Chapman To.

Carson’s best friends, played by Matt Chow and Pang Ho Cheung as a doctor, ham it up relentlessly, though Pang’s turn as a doctor does allow him to engage in some subtle humor.

Chrissie Chau plays a veterinarian.

There’s a laugh right there.

But it’s emblematic of the film as a whole. The film embraces an air of farce such that you end up not taking anything seriously.

For example, in the beginning of the film there is a flashback to Carson’s school days. The schoolboy versions of he and his two best friends are played by… Chapman To, Matt Chow and Pang Ho Cheung. There is absolutely no effort whatsoever at making them look different, let alone younger.

Another thing that helps in that department is the look of the film. It’s very nice looking, and adding such a sheen of production gloss again helps you glide over the rough patches.  Mr. & Mrs. Player/爛滾夫鬥爛滾妻 looks nice enough that at the very least, you can always just sit back and stare at it.

Also, it can help you overlook the film’s occasional lapses, whether narrative, logical, or both. At the film’s end, a character introduces a ‘relationship retrospective’ video. What follows is a montage of footage . It’s so blatant, so ridiculous, and so illogical that it’s hilarious.

How could you get mad at that? You won’t, as long as you remember: We’re not here for cinema, we’re here for entertainment.

And what’s the story meant to entertain us?

Two self-confessed players meet while double-timing.

 Literally and figuratively.

There is a spark of attraction.

 And they both have underpants soaked in gasoline.

But wait.

She’s not sure about this guy.

At least partially because he looks like this:

What if he’s Mr. Right, and not just Mr. Right Now?

What’s a girl to do?

If it’s a Wong Jing movie, the answer is bathe.

Because she asks her roommates, two women with faces for radio, to help her out with her evaluation.

She invites him to move in. And sleep in the same bed.

And no sex for 100 days. And nights.

No matter how hard it gets.

 Remember, her roommates are in on the plan.

So they bathe a lot, have problems with clothing allergies, and basically throw p*ssy at Carson like the Feral Kid in Road Warrior.

He struggles mightily with chastity, fidelity, and serenity.

Those aren’t strippers. They’re exotic dancers.

The movie has a lot of prurient laughs, whether in the form of jokes, sight gags, or self-referential humor.

There was the now-requisite mention of donkeys, but there was also a joke that references a rather infamous article written a while back about Vulgaria, and it was my biggest laugh of the film.

A close second was the most disturbing Titanic homage you will ever see.

Another source of laughs are the English subtitles, courtesy of Executive Director Daniel Chan; they are funny, evocative, and at times gloriously weird.

Mr. & Mrs. Player/爛滾夫鬥爛滾妻 has no socially redeeming value, but it does have 90 minutes of good mindless fun, and that’s what we expect from Wong Jing, innit?

But you would be wrong to think this is just another Wong Jing movie. Because this movie made a profound impression on me. And that impression is highly confusing and confounding. I actually had an epiphany during this film.

Not in my pants.

As I’ve said, Chapman To is pretty much in neutral for this movie. Plenty of fun to watch, but we’re never in any danger of believing him as the character.

It is quite odd that his counterpart, in comparison, becomes submerged in her role.

Not that she could ever really submerge with those…

I have remarkable news. Chrissie Chau can act. And she does. I’ve never seen it before (maybe I never looked up long enough to notice it), and it was really amazing.

Now, I’m not saying Meryl Streep should be nervous. But I am saying that for perhaps the first time, I actually believed in Chrissie Chau as her character.

Well, the female part. The veterinarian part not so much, but who cares?

It was so weird that it actually took me out of the movie several times. Which is obviously proof that there is something very, very wrong with me; here she is doing her job to keep me in the movie, but she’s doing it well enough that is has the opposite effect.

I realize I sound strange saying it, and I feel the same way; Chrissie Chau does a very commendable job in this role. And that, as weird as it seems, is probably the best reason to watch this film.

You will see something you’ve never seen before, and it will change you.