Movie Review: The Jade and the Pearl/翡翠明珠

****

The Shit and the Shingle.

Oooh, TVB and EEG teaming up? Wow, this movie should be extremely memorable. And it is.

It’s as memorable as getting a Cleveland Steamer from a baboon who’s been force-fed Mexican food. But not as pleasant.

The only good moments in this film are Lam Suet cross-dressing and the Tai Hing product placement. Those are sincerely funny and entertaining.

The other 110 minutes or so (yes, that is waaaaay too long) you’re just getting teabagged by this cinematic crime against humanity, and there’s no way you can keep your mouth shut. The film just won’t let you.

This film is an astounding example of what not to do in filmmaking.

It’s also overflowing with examples of what happens when Hong Kong’s TV mentality (faster! cheaper!) gets projected onto the big screen.

If people ever wonder why Hong Kong movies don’t get too much respect outside Hong Kong, it’s probably because people can see Hong Kong TV outside Hong Kong too.

Let’s face it: Hong Kong TV is cheap, tawdry, dumb, pedestrian, and utterly reprehensible.

And those are its good qualities.

If anyone wants to be offended, go ahead. So what? it doesn’t make me wrong. Only blind people would believe that local TV looks any less cheap and shoddily done than 1980s pornography.

Japanese AV has better cinematography, lighting, and production than local TV.

Of course, they spendmoney on their movies…

So this movie sucks as a movie and it also sucks because it implicitly screams “TVB THINKS YOU’RE A MORON AND THAT YOU HAVE NO STANDARDS OF ENTERTAINMENT! AND BECAUSE YOU KEEP WATCHING IT YOU MUST NOT! SO F@#$ YOU SOME MORE! WE SUCK AND YOU ACCEPT IT! OPEN YOUR MOUTH, I’M PINCHING A LOAF!!!”

What looks cheap on TV looks laughable on the big screen. A movie made quickly but not well looks like a bad TV show. When you add in the fact that it’s produced by a bad TV industry, well… you get the picture.

Trust me, change the channel.

Don’t get me wrong. I love New Year’s pictures that are resoundingly stupid.

But this is August.

I’m tired of Charlene Choi acting like a spoiled teenage brat. She’s pushing 30, for f@#$’s sake.

It’s not cute. And it’s certainly not believable. And it’s teeth-grindingly infuriating.

I kept asking myself Will someone please skull-punch this b*tch?

Wait… I was saying it out loud.

The fact that she portrays a petulance that is nauseatingly common in our fair city only makes it worse, if only for the chicken-egg conundrum.

The complete paucity of acting in this film would be laughable except that these are all ‘stars’ who make more movies and television than any decent God would allow.

The only good thing I can say about this travesty is that we watched it at the Die Nasty.

So I could (and did) yell “F@#$ YOU TOO!” at the screen.

After the movie, I made my feelings plain:

I had decided to shave my head before the film because I knew that I would otherwise have pulled it all out during the film.

Actually, I did it because it was so hot lately and because I wanted to see what it looked like and I wanted to get a scientific verification of the state of my hairline. It will grow back soon enough, but I like it.