Movie Review: Men Suddenly in Love/猛男滾死隊

I feel kind of stupid posting this in the midst of what’s happening in Japan, but here it is.

No one will ever accuse Wong Jing of being a great filmmaker, much less convict him of any such charges.

With rare exception, no one would call his movies good.

Wong Jing movies are cheap, dumb, and shoddy. They are direction-by-numbers projects, rife with underacting, overacting, and sometimes no acting at all.

And yet, almost 30 years on, he continues to make movies.

How can this be?

How can anyone sustain a career that last decades based on a body of work that is, to be frank, so often cringe-inducing?

It’s not the stories. It’s not the acting. It’s not the directing.

No, its something else.

It’s the consistencyand the reliability.

Wong Jing movies are almost alwaysterrible on a film-making level, and its been that way so long that we can stop thinking of them in such a redundant way.

Dope fiend Amy Winehouse, batsh*t crazy Britney Spears, top-heavy Chrissie Chau. Why bother stating the obvious?

In the same vein (calm down, Wino), the name Wong Jing applied to any film is a mark of cinematic puerility.

Even heknows that; he made sure that his name did not appear on Ann Hui’s The Way We Are/天水圍的日與夜, which he produced, so that people would not dismiss it.

But if we know his movies are often bad, and if they almost always are, why is there any alwaysat all?

Why did Bon Jovi sell so many records?

Because a lot of people like them.

Because they appeal to some part of people’s nature.

One might understandably not want to look too deeply into this phenomenon in abject fear of what you might find.

The Refreshments once sang that the world is full of stupid people. I think that while true, it is also disingenuous to a lot of folks, Wong Jing among them.

It’s not so much that people are stupid as much as they just don’t want to work their heads too much. Most people in the world don’t find that entertaining.

I’m one of them. If I want to exercise my brain, I’ll read Jurgen Habermas. It’s edifying and educational, but not entertaining.

PhD-holding former film professors are not the major Wong Jing demographic, either. They tend to be working class Chinese people throughout the Chinese diaspora.

I’ve been a part of the working class. I have dug ditches and pounded nails for a living. I have taught in a prison. The last thing I would have wanted after a long day at work is to sit down in a theater and watch 2046.

Even unemployed, the last thing I would want to watch is 2046.

So for me, and a lot of other people, Wong Jing’s films are judged on very simple criteria: does the film entertain and amuse me?

Luckily for me, the answer, at least 9 times out of 10, is yes. I can overlook the atrocious form and find happiness in the amusing content.

And that, dear reader, is the only way you will enjoy **Men Suddenly in Love/猛男滾死隊 .**

But assuming that you can engage the film this way, as I did, you will enjoy yourself quite a bit.

A story about five men (mostly middle-aged or older) who fall in love with five women (mostly 20s or younger) even while married, **Men Suddenly in Love/猛男滾死隊 is rife with all the sexism, juvenalia, cleavage and other tawdry hallmarks of Wong Jing’s usual work.**

This film even manages to drop the N-word in the subtitles.

This particular… gem was discussed afterwards, and we’re not sure that it was as intentional as it may have been another example of the usually cheap and neglectful nature of translation for subtitles. Perhaps a blog entry later…

Men Suddenly in Love/猛男滾死隊strains a lot of things; suspension of disbelief (Chrissie Chau falls for Eric Tsang, E-Cup Carol Yeung for Chapman To, etc.), narrative coherence (a flashback has a flashback), and tolerance of stupidity (too much to list, both within the film and about it).

Yet within this miasma (!) of wretched ineptitude are sprinkled moments of mirth, glee, and side-splitting hilarity.

Candy Hau Woon-Ling is brilliant as a gynecology patient of a doctor played by Wong Jing (see?).

Wong himself has a Moment just before he meets his new mistress’ mother.

I don’t intend to list all of these things, because it would ruin many of them for the viewer.

There are many of these things throughout the film, and even as I saw what a mess the overall movie was, I still really liked it.

The Gang of Film (電影人幫) loathed this movie, with myself as the lone exception.

But they have standards and morals.

I don’t, and as a result I enjoyed myself thoroughly last Thursday night.

They just got aggravated.

A rare reversal, I must say.

As always, thank you Mr. Wong.