Woohoo!

大日子

Malaysia, 2010, colour, 2.35:1, 94 mins.

Director: Qingyuan 青元 [Chiu].

Rating: 7/10.

Comic heartwarmer set in a Chinese-Malay fishing village is both engaging and unpretentious.

STORY

Malaysia, the present day. Penniless security guard Bing (Lin Derong), who lives in Bellamy village near Kuala Lumpur with his aged parents (Chen Jiaxin, Ye Yafeng), has just lost his job but cannot bring himself to tell them. To save face with his boastful Cantonese neighbours (Yan Wei’en, Fang Ailing), he pretends to send his parents on a holiday to Japan; in fact he gets his equally penniless friend, gay photographer Rain (Chen Zhikang), to mock up some tourist photos and tells his parents to hide out at home. However, the ruse is discovered by his nosy neighbours. Bing and Rain then decide to answer a vaguely worded advertisement for work in the small east-coast fishing village of Beserah, just north of Kuantan, and set off on Bing’s motorbike. When that breaks down, they blag a lift from another penniless friend, nerdy Hokkien char kuey teow 炒粿条 stall owner Fa (Yang Jiaxian), who is returning to his home in Penang after being dumped by his girlfriend Lian Xin (Xiao Huimin). Even though Beserah is in the opposite direction, Fa agrees, and tags along for the work. When the trio arrive in Beserah, they find the job is performing in a Kuantan Tiger Dance 关丹舞虎 that is only held once every 60 years. As local expert Lian Baji (Xiao Feihong) is too infirm to perform, his daughter Lian Rong (Zeng Jieyu), who runs the family’s salted-fish business, had secretly advertised for practitioners from Kuala Lumpur. Coached by the grandfather, the trio bluff their way along, joined by Alan (Yan Jianghan), the entrepreneurial son of the campaigning village head (Tang Runcai), and Bobby (Qiu Wenbo), an ambitious young guy from Kuantan. Then the trio discover that Lian Rong has no money to pay them.

REVIEW

Malaysia’s first 100% Chinese-produced New Year movie, Woohoo! 大日子 was a big enough success for writer-director Zhou Qingyuan 周青元 [Chiu Keng Guan] – who bills himself as just Qingyuan 青元 [Chiu] – to follow it with another comedy from the same team – Great Day 天天好天 – for New Year 2011, proving not only that there is a market in the country for local Chinese pictures but also, as Ice Kacang Puppy Love 初恋红豆冰 (2010) confirmed, that there’s more to Malaysian cinema than the self-reflexive art movies by which the country is represented at international festivals. In its mixture of silly-character comedy and heartwarming family values, Woohoo! is Southeast Asian to its fingertips. But it’s also a big-hearted, generous film that’s entertaining, very well-made at a technical level, and doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t.

Some familiarity with Malaysian-Singaporean humour and comic stereotypes would be a help to get into the movie but, after an extended introduction which sets up the dorky, penniless trio of falsetto fatso Beng, gay photographer Rain and nerdy noodle cook Huat, the film develops an ambience that’s very accessible once the story hits the east coast village of Beserah (famous for its dried salty fish). The plot itself isn’t much more than five young guys helping out a small community – and, more to the point, helping to preserve traditional Chinese customs – but it’s the detail in the characters and direction that sustains it, as well as dialogue that shifts between dialects in a natural, everyday way. Quite the opposite to the comic energy on screen, the attractive photography by Yang Junlin 杨俊麟 (Ice Kacang Puppy Love) is composed and controlled, especially in its painterly long shots of people, landscape and sea, and the music score by Xin Weili 辛伟力 is warm and joyful rather than knockabout funny.

Very different from his brutish criminal in Kidnapper 绑匪 (2010), actor-singer-DJ Lin Derong 林德荣 [Jack Lim] becomes a bit wearing with his castrato-like voice, but in general the leads are fine, with the shy Hokkien cook of Yang Jiaxian 杨佳贤 and the grand-daughter played by Zeng Jieyu 曾洁钰 standing out for quiet comic observation. Even minor characters are succinctly sketched, adding texture to the otherwise thin material: the four young daughters of the local tour guide checking out future husband material, or the campaigning village chief and his entrepreneurial son who has a different English name-card for each of his business hats. Only the character of the cook’s ex-girlfriend Lian Xin is an uncomfortable fit, with the film-makers not sure exactly what to do with her.

As well being a joyful exclamation, the film’s English title can mean both “Tiger Dance” 舞虎 and “Five Tigers” 五虎 in Mandarin pronunciation. The movie’s actual Chinese title means “Great Day” – rather confusingly, the English title of Zhou’s follow-up New Year movie. Zhou himself is a senior manager of Malaysian pay-TV giant Astro’s Chinese-language business, and the company, whose film-making subsidiary Astro Shaw co-produced the film, gets several visual plugs throughout.

CREDITS

Presented by Woohoo Pictures (MY), Astro Shaw (MY). Produced by Dreamteam Studio (MY).

Script: Li Yongchang [Ryon Lee]. Photography: Yang Junlin. Editor: Chi Jiaqing. Music direction: Xin Weili. Art direction: Sun Yongzhao. Costume design: Lv Sujun [Beatrice Looi]. Sound: Pan Keqiang. Tiger dance choreography: Xiao Feihong. Main-title design: Lin Yingying, Kenneth Feliz, Liang Wenfa.

Cast: Lin Derong [Jack Lim] (Bing), Yang Jiaxian (Fa/Huat), Chen Zhikang (Rain), Qiu Wenbo (Bobby), Yan Jianghan (Alan, village head’s son), Xiao Feihong (Lian Baji, grandfather), Zeng Jieyu (Lian Rong, Lian Baji’s younger grand-daughter), Xiao Huimin (Lian Xin/Mindy, Lian Baji’s elder grand-daughter), Yan Wei’en (Lian, Bing’s neighbour), Huang Yifei (Shui, tour guide), Zhuo Huimin (Shui’s wife), Lin Li (Durian Head, grandfather Lian’s grandson), Tang Runcai (village head), Huang Qianyi (Laidi, Shui’s first daughter), Huang Qian’en (Youdi, Shui’s fourth daughter), Fu Hanqian (Daidi, Shui’s third daughter), Fang Peiwen (Zhaodi, Shui’s second daughter), Yuan Shuncheng (swindler), Fang Ailing (Lian’s mother), Chen Jiaxin (Bing’s father), Ye Yafeng (Bing’s mother), Chen Wenqi (Uncle Black Dog), Lin Jingmiao (Miao, fat woman), Weng Shuwei (Nicholas), Zheng Qingting (salesgirl), Huang Junbin (limousine driver), He Wanqi (reporter), Long Wenmin (TV MC), Lin Baoyu (TV director), Yin Huifen (radio DJ), Fei Bi, Jia Sen.

Release: Malaysia, 14 Jan 2010.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 6 Apr 2011.)