Lose to Win

好像也没那么热血沸腾

China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 133 mins.

Director: Gao Hu 高虎.

Rating: 5/10.

Remake of a Spanish hit about a tricky basketball trainer and his team of mentally-disabled players is a mixed bag.

STORY

China, the present day. Under its tricky trainer Wei Guozheng (Wei Xiang) college basketball team Huohua has an unbroken record of wins; but in a friendly match with Shandian, trained by Wei Guozheng’s arch-rival, the rich and handsome Ma Deli (Ai Lun), Huohua only just manages to survive a defeat when Wei Guozheng pulls a stunt. Next day Wei Guozheng is suspended by Zhao (Da Li), the college’s head, who replaces him with one of the team members, the ambitious Lin Dong (Wang Ziyi). For the time being, Zhao recommends Wei Guozheng to train the basketball team of F.A.M. Benevolence, aka Benevolence Family 仁爱之家, a charity organisation for mentally-disabled young people run by Yue Guang (Wang Zhi). After meeting the eight players, Wei Guozheng begs Zhao to take him back; but he becomes more interested in the new job when he hears the team is entered in the 16th Special Olympics Basketball Championship in which Ma Deli will also be fielding a team. Wei Guozheng appoints Yue Liang (Yue Liang), younger brother of Yue Guang, as team captain, and hatches a secret plan to bring over three members of Huohua to beef up the Benevolence Family team. Yue Guang objects but Wei Guozheng locks her in the gym. However, Benevolence Family still loses the game – until the other team is disqualified for using non-disabled players. Afterwards, Yue Guang explains that each player, apart from her brother, has a special talent that Wei Guozheng should find and exploit. Wei Guozheng brings in a doctor friend, Zhang Chongyi (Zhou Dayong), as team doctor for the next match. He advises Wei Guozheng to abandon the personal vendetta against Ma Deli that’s been going on since high school, when Ma Deli stole his secret love, Meina. But Wei Guozheng refuses. Thanks to a few tricks by Wei Guozheng, Huohua progresses to the final. But taking part in the championship has cost the charity some RMB70,000-80,000, so Yue Guang urgently needs to raise some money. Luckily, Zhao comes to her rescue. At a barbecue celebrating the charity’s passage to the final, Yue Guang tells Wei Guozheng about herself, and how her mother used her personal savings to set up the charity so that Yue Liang would always be cared for. Then comes the final, against the team trained by Ma Deli.

REVIEW

The latest remake of Spanish hit Champions Campeones (2018), in which a wily basketball trainer takes on a team of mentally-disabled young players, Lose to Win 好像也没那么热血沸腾 pretty much adheres to the original’s theme that being given a chance is more important than simply winning while adding shafts of offbeat comedy via two of its stars, Wei Xiang 魏翔 and Ai Lun 艾伦, both regulars of Beijing comedy troupe Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花. Though it thankfully avoids both yuckiness and cuteness in its portrayal of the players, the film still can’t decide whether it’s a comedy or a drama, and at 130-plus minutes is way too long. It performed poorly last autumn, taking a barely polite RMB175 million at the Mainland box office.

Itself (arguably) a spin-off from the 1976 US baseball comedy The Bad News Bears, with Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal, Champions has so far been remade in Arabic (2021), German (2022) and US versions (2023), as well as scheduled for an Indian remake directed by (who else but?) Aamir Khan. It’s also spawned its own sequel, Championext Campeonex, under the same director, Javier Fesser, released in Aug 2023 to somewhat less success. The script of Lose to Win is by the film’s creative producer 监制 Xing Wenxiong 邢文雄, 36, a theatre director who had a major box-office hit with his first film, Too Cool to Kill 这个杀手不太冷静 (2022), a remake of the 2008 Japanese comedy The Magic Hour ザ・マジックアワー by Mitani Koki. Too Cool was retooled (badly) for the Ma Hua FunAge team, including Wei in his first leading role after years as a likeable character actor. The irony – given Lose’s poor box office – is that both Xing’s script and Wei’s performance are in some respects much subtler than in their previous collaboration.

On the credit side, Xing has tightened up the original’s story by making the tricky trainer a bachelor and thereby ditching Champions’ plot thread about the trainer and his quarrelsome wife. He’s also resisted the urge to create a replacement romantic subplot between the trainer and the film’s new female lead, who is head of the mentally-disabled charity. On the debit side, that doesn’t leave much to drive the movie apart from training scenes and the basketball matches themselves, which soon become repetitive (especially for viewers with no interest in the sport). Xing’s clumsy solution is to insert a giant, 50-minute plot diversion before the finale in which the club runs out of money and the trainer falls out with the charity’s head. By the time the 20-minute finale starts, even basketball fans will feel sated.

The film is basically driven by Wei’s performnce as the tricky trainer who’ll do anything to win, and his scenes with Ma Hua FunAge colleague Ai Lun (as his handsome and successful nemesis) are among the best in the whole thing. There’s also a nice twist at the 92-minute mark that adds more depth to Wei’s character, though as a whole the film is light on psychology. As the devoted charity head who wants to protect her charges from the outside world, and resists the trainer’s plan to give them life skills to deal with it, Wang Zhi 王智, 40, another regular with the Ma Hu FunAge gang (Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼, 2015), is a good foil for Wei’s exaggerated comedy. Previously known as Wang Zixuan 王紫瑄, and in both comedy and action roles in the past, she makes the most of a slightly underwritten role that never tips over into soggy romance. Supporting roles are solid, especially by Zhou Dayong 周大勇 as the team doctor and Da Li 大力, aka Hou Dali 侯大力, as the trainer’s old boss. The team is played by a mixture of genuinely challenged people (Yue Liang 岳亮, Liu Sibo 刘斯博, Liu Muqi 刘沐琪) and professional actors, with the dividing line invisible.

Gao Hu 高虎, a versatile d.p. (Jianbing Man 煎饼侠, 2015; City of Rock 缝纫机乐队, 2017; Too Cool to Kill; I Love You 我要和你在一起, 2022) making his directing debut, delivers a warm, good-looking package within the script’s limitations, though less song montages, which add little, would have helped. The film’s colloquial Chinese title roughly means “Doesn’t Seem That Passionate, Either”.

CREDITS

Presented by Huaxia Film Distribution (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Shanghai Aim Media (CN), Changying Group (Shanghai) Film & TV Media (CN), Shanghai Taopiaopiao Movie & TV Culture (CN), Beijing Huanxi Premiere Culture (CN), Huanxi Media Group (Beijing) (CN), Guangzhou Humongous Culture (CN), Mountaintop Culture Media (Tianjin) (CN), Phoenix Legend Films (CN), Wanda Cinemas (CN). Produced by Shanghai Aim Media (CN).

Script: Xing Wenxiong. Photography: Gao Hu. Editing: Huang Shang. Music: Peng Fei. Art direction: Lin Mu. Costumes: Tian Ye. Styling: Fu Lei. Sound: Chen Chen. Action: Hu Lifeng. Visual effects: Yuan Huatang, Wu Zhen. Executive direction: Bi Yongming.

Cast: Wei Xiang (Wei Guozheng), Wang Zhi (Yue Guang), Yue Liang (Yue Liang), Han Xiao (Han Xiao), Jian Kang (Li Yu), Liu Muqi (Duidui), Liu Sibo (Jianguo/Shuaige/Handsome), Liu Xuetao (Xuetao), Yu Baishui (Ren Zhen), Zhang Hengrui (Da Bai), Ai Lun (Ma Deli), Wang Ziyi (Lin Dong, Huohua team captain), Zhou Dayong (Zhang Chongyi, team doctor), Yu Yang (car dealer), Ma Xudong (sports commentator), Da Li [Hou Dali] (Zhao, college head), Zhang Zhihua (Auntie Fang, Yue Guang’s assistant), Di Ye (policeman), Lv Xin (Lv Xin, JR University trainer), Chang Lechen (Zhao Shuang), Shi Junyuan (Liu Tiegang), Yan Shuai (Ma Defa).

Release: China, 28 Sep 2023.