CNY Movie Review: Mr. & Mrs. Incredible/神奇俠侶

The third and final CNY movie review of 2011.

Sadly, it took me until last week to see Mr. & Mrs. Incredible/神奇俠侶, but at least I was lucky enough to have a (mostly) empty theatre. More on that later.

This was probably my most looked-forward-to (?) film of the 2011 CNY season, due mostly to a number of really funny teasers and trailers. You can find them on YouTube, but I won’t link them here.

I should also qualify that statement about looking forward to the film, because that only applied up until some people I know actually watched it and expressed disappointment.

The promise of the trailers was apparently grossly unfulfilled. I was warned that **Mr. & Mrs. Incredible/神奇俠侶 was not very funny or very good.**

But hey, I watch movies so you don’t have to, right?

So off I went to Langham Place on a Tuesday afternoon.

Langham Place was part of the Hong Kong government’s attempt to revitalize/gentrify/clean up Portland St., the epicenter of the Kowloon sex trade.

In the same way that ‘Times Square’ used to conjure up all things seedy to American minds, the very mention of Portland St. to locals was to invoke hookers, pink fluorescent lights, and pimps on the street soliciting passersby who might want a girl.

To combat this perception, a new hotel and mall were constructed.

Odd, then, that it looks so much like a holstered sex toy.

They must have gotten the architectural firm of Wang, Dong and Schlong  (LLC) to design it.

It’s even worse at night, when the rainbow of colors on the dome tends to default to peachwith alarming frequency.

Maybe its just me.

Enough of this tawdry digression…

So I went to the box office at the base of the shaft and bought my ticket. Apparently, myself and 11 others would take in the film on this fine spring afternoon.

There were no trailers; we got right to the film.

Well, not all of us. Two women were late for the film, about 15 minutes.

They apparently spent all that time at the snack bar, such was the profusion of food they were carrying.

Because God loves me so much, they turned out to be sitting right next to me.

Which was made clear when one of them brusquely told me to move my backpack off her seat. I guess none of the other 138 available seats would do.

Who the f@#$ did I think I was???

It seemed she and her friend were late for their 2 o’clock feeding, since they started to do so both quickly and noisily.

This did not, however, prevent them from carrying on a conversation with each other or a number of people on their phones.

I thought about asking them to speak more quietly. But I got the impression this request would not be met with agreement, much less contrition.

Or grace, if we want to keep using quasi-religious terms.

I had an image of being told off none too gently and I just wasn’t in the mood for a confrontation.

Not to mention that I was actually trying to pay attention to the movie I had paid for.

But f@#$ me anyway.

I tried to ignore it. I couldn’t.

One thing I love about living in Hong Kong is that the society is so highly advanced in some ways.

For example, interpersonal violence is nearly nonexistent.

So too is the once-high comprehension of English.

I find this useful since I am trying to make a living teaching English, and if people already spoke it well I would not have such good business prospects.

But the two of those things together are useful at times, such as when I finally lost my patience and got up to move, mumbling none too quietly “You fat bitches make me sick…” in English.

I sat in the virtually empty front half of the theatre, and though I could still hear the  天氣女孩 behind me, it was not as loud.

Not even when they belched.

Yes, they did.

So I was, eventually, able to focus more completely on this film I just knewI was going to dislike.

I am such a masochist.

And so what of  **Mr. & Mrs. Incredible/神奇俠侶, the movie I wanted to like so much but knew I couldn’t?**

*Well, its not a simple matter.*

*If we take the view from the trailers, so to speak, we know what Sarah Palin sees.*

*No, that’s a joke.*

*What I mean is, if we look at  *Mr. & Mrs. Incredible/神奇俠侶 in any relation to the trailers for it, we would be roundly disappointed and even a little angry. The trailers promised us a very witty, fun, entertaining film based on a certain style, tone, and story.****

***Well, *Mr. & Mrs. Incredible/神奇俠侶**** ain’t that movie.******

***Cue your humble reviewer losing it, right?***

***No.***

***Because what we get instead is a film I found to be very affecting, well-acted, and, dare I say it, sweet.***

Louis Koo and Sandra Ng are a married couple, two superheroes who have retired to a small, isolated village where they choose to eke out an existence as normal, everyday people and keep the door to their past firmly shut, hoping that the rest of the worlddoes so as well.

They have little but each other, but that is all they want or need.

They decide to buy a home, and soon feel that it is too large for only two people. But they both have physical impediments to conceiving, and their efforts to combat these issues form the subtext for much of the rest of the film.

In the midst of this, a martial arts tournament is announced, and it will take place in this out-of-the-way venue for seemingly innocuous reasons. Of course, it’s a movie, and it can never be so simple, right?

Of course not!

And let me say now that the martial arts plot is not very well realized, either conceptually or physically, so I’m not giving the film a pass.

But it does provide the backdrop for some manipulations of the plot, the audience, and the characters.

For example, a young child who once met Louis Koo’s Gazer Warrior returns, though now she’s all grown up.

Into a very noticeable woman.

Who notices Louis Koo.

A lot.

And notices that he may even bethe Gazer Warrior.

She shows a lotof interest in him, for a lot of reasons, in a lot of ways.

Sandra Ng notices her husband being noticed.

And she puts him on notice.

Of course, this film is made with China in mind, so there are no inappropriate things shown onscreen. Still, it is interesting to note how the film manages, at least conceptually, to have its cake and lick its taut young belly too.

So to speak.

What really carries this film, really makes it into something worth seeing, are the performances by Louis Koo and Sandra Ng. They sold me on their characters, and I found myself amazed at how much I bought into them.

I say that because Sandra Ng can, and has, chewed up more scenery than Eric Kot and the sharks from all 3 Jawsmovies.

So when she starts crying in a scene, and I almost do because she’s so believable, a voice in my head asks me what the hell’s going on.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this!

These are two very commendable performances, because one half of my brain knows its watching two stars I am quite familiar with, and the other half is absolutely overlooking that familiarity and buying into the characters completely. I really believed that these two people loved each other and cared about each other more than anything or anyone else in the world.

Sandra Ng and Louis Koo manage, in the midst of a sometimes sub-par film, to turn in two very strong, believable performances that had me smiling for a very long time after I left the theatre.

Tripping one of the fat girls down the escalator probably helped, but I’d like to think it was mostly the movie.

I am as surprised and happy as anyone to declare the 2011 CNY movie season a 100% success at 3/3. I didn’t think it would be like this, but I am very glad it was.