Great Day
天天好天
Malaysia, 2011, colour, 2.35:1, 91 mins.
Director: Qingyuan 青元 [Chiu].
Rating: 7/10.
Another comic heartwarmer from the team behind Woohoo!, but mellower and more didactic.
STORY
Malaysia, the present day. At Bukit Puteh Old People’s Home, a ramshackle site amid the paddy fields of Perlis state, grumpy old men Lin Dan (Lin Yaoming), a Hokkien Chinese, and Lin Acai (Tan Yashui), a Cantonese Chinese, spend their days constantly bickering. Bored and missing their children, the two decide to steal away south to Kuala Lumpur on the back of the small truck of Cantonese deliveryman Fu (Lin Derong), though at the last moment Lin Acai pulls out due to an injury. Lin Dan stays with his daughter, workaholic tour guide Lin Fengjiao (Zhuo Huiqin), and her young daughter Lin Sixin (Li Xinqiao), but neither has much time for him. Lin Fengjiao says her husband is away on business. Lin Dan discovers his son Lin Zhiying (Chen Zhikang) no longer works in a bank and has become a (very camp) freelance photographer. Meanwhile, Fu visits his ageing, absent-minded mother (Ye Yalan), who has been staying with his cousin, hawker-stall owner Liu Duohao (Yin Huifen), whom he’s long been sweet on. Feeling sorry for Lin Acai, who couldn’t come to Kuala Lumpur with him, Fu decides to arrange a surprise for his forthcoming birthday by getting his son, schoolteacher Lin Xiaoshun (Yan Jianghan), to visit him in Perlis. But that proves easier said than done.
REVIEW
This follow-up by Chinese Malaysian director Zhou Qingyuan 周青元 [Chiu Keng Guan] to his 2010 Chinese New Year hit Woohoo! 大日子 unites many of the same cast and crew in a more mellow and didactic comedy that’s more smoothly directed but not so lively. Great Day 天天好天 is a very Southeast Asian Chinese movie, from its copious local jokes to its swings between the comic and sentimental and its underlying message about filial respect for one’s parents. However, it’s a measure of Zhou’s skill that the feel-good side never becomes cloying, and that’s largely due to the characterful cast of older actors and the movie’s simplicity and economy in its direction and writing. Compared with Woohoo!, there’s much less decoration around the edges of the script by Li Yongchang 李勇昌 [Ryon Lee], who also wrote the previous film.
Hokkien Chinese Zhou, who bills himself as Qingyuan 青元 [Chiu], and whose day job is senior manager of Malaysian pay-TV giant Astro’s Chinese-language business, again uses actors and DJs largely from Astro and radio station My FM (both of which get plugs in the film), and even throws in a cameo by local arthouse director He Yuheng 何宇恒 (Rain Dogs 太阳雨, 2006; At the End of Daybreak 心魔, 2009). From its upbeat original title – meaning “Every Day Is a Great Day” – to its determination to promote Chinese Malay values, the movie is another cultural gauntlet thrown down to help revive Chinese-language film-making in the country beyond small-budget arty fare for the international festival circuit.
Much of the humour is either untranslatable or very specific to the region – especially the yoyo-ing between the Hokkien and Cantonese dialects and sub-cultures. But that aside, the overall tone is warm and accessible, with individual characterisations taking precedence over the episodic plot. Stripped of his silly falsetto voice in Woohoo! (2010), actor-singer-DJ Lin Derong 林德荣 [Jack Lim] is far more likeable here as a simple deliveryman, and his awkward romance with the hawker-stall owner of Yin Huifen 尹汇雰 is nicely drawn on both sides. Despite its set-up as a comedy about two grumpy old men, the film doesn’t actually develop that way, instead concentrating on just one of them, played with unsentimental grit by Lin Yaoming 林耀明. And as in Woohoo!, Zhou draws good performances from children – here, Li Xinqiao 李馨巧 as the deliveryman’s initially snooty grand-daughter and Chen Haoyan 陈浩严 as the deliveryman’s son.
On a technical level the film is slicker than Woohoo!, with returning d.p. Yang Junlin 杨俊麟 drawing some mouth-watering landscapes (especially in the northern, paddy-field state of Perlis) that Malaysia’s tourist board would be proud of.
CREDITS
Presented by Astro (MY). Produced by Woohoo Pictures (MY).
Script: Li Yongchang [Ryon Lee]. Photography: Yang Junlin. Editing: Mai Zhikang. Music: Xin Weili. Art direction: Sun Yongzhao. Costume design: Lv Sujun [Beatrice Looi]. Sound: Du Duzhi.
Cast: Lin Derong [Jack Lim] (Fu/Hock), Yan Jianghan (Lin Xiaoxun, Lin Acai’s son), Lin Yaoming (Lin Dan), Chen Zhikang (Lin Zhiying, Lin Dan’s son), Yin Huifen (Liu Duohao, Fu’s cousin), Zhuo Huiqin (Lin Fengjiao, Lin Dan’s daughter), Li Xinqiao (Lin Sixin/Joey, Lin Fengjiao’s daughter), Chen Haoyan (Boy, Fu’s son), Ye Yalan (Fu’s mother), Tan Yashui (Lin Acai), Wanda (Susanti, Lin Fengjiao’s maid), Yang Jiaxian (Ultra Man, salesman), Xiao Huimin (doctor), Yan Wei’en (Lian), Huang Yifei (dance trainer), Chen Haoran (1819 trainer), Zheng Qingting (nurse), Long Wenmin (volunteer), Qiu Wenbo (star), Jia Sen (MC), Lin Jingmiao (Miss Lee, old people’s home supervisor), Yuan Shuncheng (Yang), Xin Weili (Cheng, Lin Fengjiao’s husband), He Yuheng (musicvideo director).
Release: Malaysia, 13 Jan 2011.
(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 11 Aug 2011.)