Hello, Mrs. Money

李茶的“姑妈”

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 112 mins.

Director: Wu Yuhan 吴昱翰.

Rating: 8/10.

Slickly packaged farce on greed and conspicuous consumption is Ma Hua FunAge’s best-paced, most purely entertaining adaptation to date.

STORY

Aman island, somewhere in East Asia, Sep 2018. A group of people are awaiting the arrival of reclusive billionaire Monica (Lu Jingshan) on her yacht. They include her distant nephew, wealthy Li Cha (Song Yang); his fiancee Lulu (Wang Yu); her father Wang Andi (Han Yanbo), chairman of financially embattled Dazha Group; Wang Andi’s elder daughter, Lili (Zhang Puran); her husband Liang Jierui (Ai Lun), general manager of Dazha Group; Liang Jierui’s once rich but now bankrupt father, Liang Youde (Chen Bing); and Dazha Group’s general flunky, Huang Canghai (Huang Cailun), who has organised the lavish engagement ceremony for Li Cha and Lulu that Monica is to attend. No one on the island has met or seen a photo of Monica; in fact, she’s young and beautiful and knows exactly why she’s been invited – for her money. She lets them wait a bit and secretly swims ashore, incognito. Wang Andi, who’s arranged Lulu’s engagement to Li Cha purely for financial reasons, tells Li Cha that if Monica doesn’t arrive he’ll never let him marry his daughter. In fact, Li Cha has already received a secret message that she’s cancelled. He admits this to Liang Jierui, and both try to think of a solution. In the confusion, Huang Canghai, who’s been relaxing in Monica’s hotel suite after he too learned she’s not coming, is mistaken for Monica. Li Cha and Liang Jierui decide to keep the charade going, especially as no one knows what Monica actually looks like. While stealing makeup and clothing from around the hotel, Huang Canghai actually bumps into the real Monica as she’s stealing a waitress’ uniform to go “undercover”. Finally the fake Monica is unveiled at the reception and everyone is fooled. When the real Monica declares her true identity, none of the guests believes her, so she poses as “Jessica”, the fake Monica’s personal maid. Meanwhile, and Huang Canghai juggles his two identities, various male members of the party make advances on the fake Monica for their own ends.

REVIEW

A group of sharks assembled on a tropical island get caught up in their own avaricious shenanigans in Hello, Mrs. Money 李茶的“姑妈”, the latest adaptation of one of their own stage productions by Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花, following time-travel lark Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼 (2015) and body-swap comedy Never Say Die 羞羞的铁拳 (2017). One of last year’s most purely entertaining Mainland comedies, Money lacks some of the earlier films’ social underpinnings – basically trading on the same conspicuous consumption it makes fun of – but at a script and performance level is the slickest outing yet by the Beijing-based comic troupe, and virtually a companion piece to its first big-screen original, Hello Mr. Billionaire 西虹市首富 (2018), starring Ma Hua stalwart Shen Teng 沈腾, released two months earlier.

Maybe because it wasn’t built around Shen’s star presence, or maybe because it just came too close on the heels of Billionaire, Money registered only a nice RMB604 million rather than anything more explosive (Loser‘s RMB1.4 billion; Die‘s RMB2.2 billion; Billionaire‘s RMB2.5 billion). But that in no way overshadows its fine all-round packaging – from the comic ensemble through the well-honed script to the top-notch photography, design, and scoring (including a Bollywood-style beach number for the opening credits). The fact that the lead actor (Huang Cailun 黄才伦) and directors (Wu Yuhan 吴昱翰, Zhang Yiming 张一鸣) of the original Dec 2015 stage production (see poster, left) were all involved seems to have worked in its favour.  Outside the theatre, Wu, 32, has previously directed only TV drama series.

Like Billionaire, which was freely based on the classic US novel Brewster’s Millions, Money also takes its inspiration from a much-filmed western source – the 1892 cross-dressing farce Charley’s Aunt, written by UK actor-writer Brandon Thomas. (The connection survives in the Chinese title of the film – literally, “Li Cha’s ‘Aunt'” – which reverses the syllables of “Charley” to form a nonsense name meaning “Li Tea”.) The theme is again money, money, money and the basic outline of Thomas’ play has been cleverly adapted into a standalone piece that sits easily in China’s present-day money culture, though conveniently set on a fictitious tropical island, Aman (doubled by Malaysia’s Langkawi island). Here, in a luxury resort, the chairman of a financially shakey group has arranged a splashy engagement ceremony for his younger daughter to a geek, Li Cha, whom he thinks is wealthy, or at least has a super-wealthy distant aunt, Monica, who can rescue his company. When she fails to turn up, or at least pretends not to, the fiance gets the company’s flunky to impersonate her in drag – which is possible as no one has ever seen the reclusive billionairess.

The story, by Wu, Zhang and lead actor Huang, throws in a host of other sharks looking to capitalise off of Monica’s presence, as well as Monica herself, who turns out to be young, beautiful and very savvy, observing events in the guise of a waitress at the party. And while frantically changing back and forth between himself and “Monica”, the flunky also tries to negotiate his own promotion in the chairman’s company. Honouring its origins, the film is much more farcical in tone than Ma Hua’s previous movies but richly enough plotted not to run out of steam in the final stretch. In fact, the final half-hour completely reinvents itself from existing material and manages to keep the energy level high.

The script, by Ma Hua’s Qian Chenguang 钱晨光 and Taiwan TVD writer Wu Jinrong 吴瑾蓉, opens up the play in a highly cinematic way, making the most of the location’s physical dimensions as well as the big screen’s possibilities. As well as the physical scrambling between the lead’s two roles, a high point is the actual engagement party, with Li Cha’s proposal staged as three different musical-fantasy numbers. The finale, with Shen cameoing as the wedding priest, also throws in a physically impressive SFX sequence that actually makes dramatic sense as well.

Binding everything together, however, is the playing, which not only has a real ensemble feel of actors with stage experience but is also crowned by the comic trio of Huang in the busy role of the harassed flunky-cum-campy “Monica”, plus Ma Hua stalwarts Ai Lun 艾伦 (here at his best as a major support rather than a solo lead as in the recent The Human Comedy 人间•喜剧, 2019) as the chairman’s sidekick and Song Yang 宋阳 (director of Never Say Die) as the titular Li Cha. Their group chemistry, as the engineers of the whole scam, motors the film, which is then strong enough to include a host of other colourful characters, including Han Yanbo 韩彦博 (the glassy-eyed KMT official in Mr. Donkey 驴得水, 2016) as the devious but hoodwinked chairman and TV host Chen Bing 陈冰 as the spacey father of the chairman’s sidekick.

Last but not least, Hong Kong-born, half-Chinese Lu Jingshan 卢靖姗 [Celine Jade] (Wolf Warrior II 战狼II, 2017), daughter of US martial artist Roy Horan, puts in another quietly impressive, very relaxed performance as the real Monica, bringing a touch of reality to all the over-played farce. Of the other female cast in a very male-heavy lineup, young Ma Hua actress Wang Yu 王宇, as Li Cha’s unwilling fiancee, gets the best put-down line in the movie (“Would you mind going over to that island and picking a flower for me?”).

Richly coloured widescreen photography by Li Bingqiang 李炳强 (Fleet of Time 勿勿那年, 2014; Never Say Die), ditto production design and styling by Li Sheng 李昇, a jazzy score by Zheng Yixiao 郑一肖 and Zheng Yang 郑阳, and on-the-beat editing by Li Dianshi 李点石 (Caught in the Web 搜索, 2012) and Tan Yukun 谭玉坤 (Pegasus 飞驰人生, 2019) are all major pluses on the technical side.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Fun Age Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), New Classics Media (CN), Tianjin Transcend Communications (CN). Produced by Beijing Fun Age Pictures (CN).

Script: Qian Chenguang, Wu Jinrong. Original story: Wu Yuhan, Zhang Yiming, Huang Cailun. Photography: Li Bingqiang. Editing: Li Dianshi, Tan Yukun. Music: Zheng Yixiao, Zheng Yang. Music direction: Zheng Yixiao. Production design: Li Sheng. Art direction: Fan Lijuan. Costume design: Li Sheng. Sound: Yang Hao, Zhao Nan, Yang Jiang. Visual effects: Yang Zhi, Qiao Feng. Choreography: He Zijun, Lu Ying. Executive direction: Xi Zi.

Cast: Huang Cailun (Huang Canghai), Ai Lun (Liang Jierui/Jerry), Song Yang (Li Cha/Richard), Lu Jingshan [Celina Jade] (Monica), Han Yanbo (Wang Andi/Andy), Chen Bing (Liang Youde, Liang Jierui’s father), Zhang Puran (Lili, Liang Jierui’s wife), Wang Yu (Lulu, Li Cha’s fiancee), Shen Teng (priest), Chang Yuan (hotel barman), Wang Chengsi (Mate), Zhang Chen (bodyguard), Wei Wei (photographer), Tao Liang (singing bum), Zhu Weiwei, Lu Ying (shop attendants), Li Haiyin (Huang Canghai’s mother), He Zijun (waitress), Gao Haibao (driver), Zhao Xue (Xiaoxi/Celia), Liu Kun (Xiaoxi’s boyfriend).

Release: China, 30 Sep 2018.