Movie Review: Happily Ever After/很想和你在一起

The Movie Night Gang saw this Saturday Night.

At Elementsin Kowloon.

Great theatre for a not-great movie.It wasn't playing at the Dynasty; we checked.I'm not generally a fan of EEG propaganda moviesstar vehicles, but the simple truth is  that I had f@#$ all else on my dance card for the evening and I really do enjoy dinners with people who, like myself, werestupidcommitted enough to Hong Kong cinema to move here.

That last remark is totally unfair, because I consider myself far and away the dumbest of the bunch. The only signs of poor intellect I can detect in them is their continued tolerance of me. I must, on occasion, be somehow useful.

Well, that makes a lovely transition, because even before the movie started, my friends were encouraging me to 'Dynast-ize' this upscale theatre by talking back to what we knew was going to be a contender for one of the more laughable offerings this year.

They actually wanted me to talk smack to/during the film.

And boy did I run my mouth. I said terrible, mean, awful things, to the extent that at the film's emotional climax I blurted out a prediction of pedophilia.

Do you notice that I make sick, ugly jokes, but still don't have spoilers? Trust me with your viewing habits, but not your naked proclivities...

Nearly everything in this movie was ripe for ridicule, and I even went after the things that weren't ripe yet. I think I actually talked more than some of the main characters...

I felt very happy that I had entertained my friends in the theatre and, occasionally, the other 6 people in there.

And I actually must admit, I didn't hate this movie. It was pedestrian, overwrought, laughably predictable, horribly acted, written, and directed, and it made me feel very old and white, so far was I from the target demographic.

But this film was fun because it had so many narrative and dramatic hangnails which I could grab hold of and tear off a comic morsel.

The last crap film I watchedwas so well-manicured and such a repository of proletarian dullardry that I was reduced to hurling invective at it.

Happily Ever After was a fun time, not in spite of its shortcomings but because of them.

I liked it if for no other reason than the male lead looked a lot like Dicky Cheung at a young age.

So when they make that biopic, the kid will easily get the role.

One of the best things I can say about this film is that it managed to make a place in the narrative that read "CUT HERE FOR CHINA" in big (simplified) characters, but still managed to tell a coherent story after that point and didn't pander to the (big Red) Panda, so to speak.

Unlike so many of its contemporaries, this film did nothing that would qualify it to play the female lead in a home video or photograph in which Edison Chen plays China.Thanks to the Movie Night Gang for putting up with me.

And thanks for laughing so much.