Lost in Hong Kong

港囧

China, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 108 mins.

Director: Xu Zheng 徐峥.

Rating: 6/10.

Pleasant but tame follow-up to Lost in Thailand lacks chemistry between its leads and real belly-laughs.

STORY

Shanghai, 1994. Xu Lai (Xu Zheng) and Yang Yi (Du Juan), two students at the Shanghai United Academy of Fine Arts, fall for each other via their idealistic love of painting. Xu Lai is also befriended by Cai Bo, aka Spinach (Zhao Wei), who is studying business management. In 1997, however, Yang Yi is offered a place at The University of Hong Kong and leaves Shanghai. Xu Lai is devastated – especially as he never even got to kiss her – and ends up consoled by Cai Bo, who’s always secretly fancied him. They marry, and Xu Lai gives up his painterly aspirations and takes a job designing bras in her father’s underwear factory. In 2014, at a 20th anniversary class reunion, Xu Lai receives a message from Yang Yi that she’s having an exhibition in Hong Kong on 17 Oct and hopes he can attend. As a pretext, Xu Lai arranges a week’s holiday for him and Cai Bo in Hong Kong; unfortunately, all his in-laws come along as well, perpetually nagging Xu Lai about not having fathered a family. Yang Yi’s exhibition is on their penultimate day there, but Xu Lai can’t shake off Cai Bo’s younger idiot brother, Cai Lala (Bao Bei’er) who follows him everywhere with a minicam as part of a documentary project. When two Kowloon detectives (Ge Minhui, Li Canchen) question Xu Lai about a man who fell off a building opposite his hotel, Xu Lai tries to slip away by pointing them in Cai Lala’s direction. However, Cai Lala catches up with him, and the pair become caught up in a street scene being shot by director Wang Jing (Wang Jing) for his new film, 古惑仔大战铁头人, in the Young and Dangerous gangster series. Xu Lai ends up with an iron helmet stuck on his head, and then in an S&M parlour when he tries to have it removed by a locksmith (Che Baoluo). Meanwhile, the two detectives are on the trail of the suspicious pair. Xu Lai finally reaches the mall where Ying Yi is having her exhibition, but getting to talk to her is another matter. He then gets an urgent call from his in-laws to come to a hospital because of Cai Bo.

REVIEW

The magic’s not quite the same second time around in Lost in Hong Kong 港囧, a follow-up by Mainland comedian-filmmaker Xu Zheng 徐峥 to his mega-hit Lost in Thailand 人再囧途之泰囧 (2012). Much less manic, and initially letting the humour seep into the fabric rather than hit the viewer in the face, the film falls victim to its own caution and a script that never develops any comic or dramatic momentum. Another (unrelated) odd-couple comedy in a foreign location, Hong Kong is pleasant enough for 90 minutes or so but not as slickly tooled as its Thai cousin and without its belly-laughs.

The absence of Wang Baoqiang 王宝强 in the idiot role opposite another of Xu’s devious know-alls is painfully noticeable. The duo created some memorable chemistry in Thailand – as well as in their previous pairing, Lost on Journey (2010) – and comic actor Bao Bei’er 包贝尔 just doesn’t have a strong enough screen presence to replace Wang. Also, where Thailand had the bonus of a third star name – scruffy comic Huang Bo 黄渤 as a hissable villain – Hong Kong just has a pair of low-wattage detectives played by Ge Minhui 葛民辉 [Eric Kot] and Li Canchen 李灿琛 [Sam Lee], who are basically there to give the film a finale.

Rather than plunging the viewer straight into some comic action, the script, by five hands including Xu and Thailand‘s Shu Huan 束焕, starts in a surprisingly leisurely way, showing a college love-triangle back in the mid-1990s and how idealistic artist Xu Lai (Xu) sold out his ideals when his first love (new name Du Juan 杜鹃) left for Hong Kong and he married an underwear-maker’s daughter (Zhao Wei 赵薇) instead. This 10-minute opening, bathed in nostalgic light by returning d.p. Song Xiaofei 宋晓飞, memorably combines both aspects of Xu’s film-making personality – a dry sense of the absurd and an old-fashioned romanticism – with some well-turned dialogue.

Particularly memorable is the first meeting, in a lecture hall, between Xu’s student (all glasses and long hair) and Zhao’s insistent admirer (all neat and prim). The story of them and Xu Lai’s first love is charmingly drawn, almost like a mini-feature, through references to Hong Kong films and songs of the time. By the time the film gets to the present day, the viewer knows the leads’ backstories in some detail; but what the script then fails to do is capitalise on that, as it drifts off into a wispy-thin plot about Xu Lai trying to shake off his idiot brother-in-law and cross town to meet his first love after 20 years.

With the two detectives sliding in and out the story, and Xu Lai’s annoying relatives despatched for the day, the focus centres on Xu Lai and the brother-in-law as they get into one pickle after another. This generally involves – as befits a vertical city like Hong Kong – hanging onto something high (window ledge, bridge, sight-seeing bus etc), which becomes a tad repetitive as a source of thrills ‘n’ spills. The pair’s relationship should be what drives the film, but the chemistry between the two actors just isn’t there – just as it isn’t between Hong Kong’s Ge and Li as the lame-double-act detectives or between Mainland actors like veteran Pan Hong 潘虹 and goofy Wang Xun 王迅 as two of Xu’s appalling in-laws. The cameos are largely so-what: Hong Kong director Wang Jing 王晶 [Wong Jing] as himself (“Cut! Let’s rewrite the script!”) or Wu Yaohan 吴耀汉 [Richard Ng] as an old man in a lift.

Xu bends over so much to make a family-friendly heartwarmer this time round that he does the film no favours: not a whisper of gross-out comedy (despite one sequence being set in an S&M parlour and another in a fertility clinic) and not a whisper about the sensitive topic of Mainland tourists behaving badly in the territory, let alone cross-border cultural tensions. If Xu had gone with the flow, and for some obvious belly-laughs, Hong Kong would at least have garnered some real laughter rather than just amused smiles.

Capping its stop-start structure, the script manufactures a finale that brings the main protagonists together in a suitably vertiginous location – a large plate of glass wobbling hundreds of metres in the air, a suitable metaphor for Xu Lai’s slidey nature. The sequence is the most tensely staged in the whole film, but eventually weakened by too much dialogue and the cast’s lack of empathy.

Zhao is at her best in the opening scenes; in the present-day story she’s given too little to work with, disappearing once the main plot starts and re-appearing only much later. As Xu Lai’s love of his life, Shanghai-born actress-model Du, 33 – the wife who went to the US in American Dreams in China 中国合伙人 (2013) – has a willowy grace, and a calm maturity that contrasts well with Xu’s slobby hero, but not much natural screen presence.

Technical contributions are thoroughly professional, from d.p. Song (Cow 斗牛, 2009; Beijing Love Story 北京爱情故事, 2014) to fellow returnees editor Tu Yiran 屠亦然 (Brotherhood of Blades 绣春刀, 2014) and music supervisor Zhao Yingjun 赵英俊. As well as co-writing the script, the last also penned the theme song by Wang Fei 王菲 [Faye Wong] over the end titles. Elsewhere, the film uses a large number of Cantonese songs that were popular in the Mainland over the years.

None of the film’s weaknesses harmed its China box office which, fuelled by huge anticipation, topped RMB1.6 billion, up from Thailand‘s (then record-breaking) RMB1.3 billion. The film completes an unofficial trilogy of buddy/road comedies starring Xu – unofficial because the first, Lost on Journey, was separately produced, written and directed.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing Joy Leader Culture Communication (CN), Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN), Shannan Enlight Pictures (CN), Beijing Pulin Production (CN). Produced by Beijing Joy Leader Culture Communication (CN).

Script: Xu Zheng, Shu Huan, Su Liang, Zhao Yingjun, Xing Aina. Photography: Song Xiaofei. Editing: Tu Yiran. Music: Peng Fei. Theme song: Zhao Yingjun. Vocal: Wang Fei. Music supervision: Xu Zheng, Zhao Yingjun. Production design: Wen Nianzhong [Man Lim-chung]. Art direction: Cai Zhixi (Hong Kong), Yu Junjie (Shanghai). Styling: Wen Nianzhong [Man Lim-chung]. Costumes: Zhong Chuting (Hong Kong). Sound: An Wei. Action: Qian Jiale [Chin Ka-lok]. Car stunts: Wu Haitang. Special effects: Zou Linren, Zhang Dizhe. Visual effects: Hao Jun, Christoph Zollinger, Wang Xiaobo (Pixomondo).

Cast: Xu Zheng (Xu Lai), Zhao Wei (Cai Bo/Spinach), Bao Bei’er (Cai Lala, Cai Bo’s younger brother), Du Juan (Yang Yi), Ge Minhui [Eric Kot] (older detective), Li Canchen [Sam Lee] (Dai Baihao, younger detective), Tao Hong (prize-gving MC), Pan Hong (Pan Tongtong, Cai Bo’s mother), Zhao Youliang (Cai Youliang, Cai Bo’s father), Zhu Yuanyuan (Cai Bo’s elder sister), Wang Xun (her husband), Yu Tian’ao (Cai Bo’s nephew), Feng Mianheng (restaurant waiter), He Peiyu, Cui Bijia, Xu Peiyu (promo girls), Ruan Yixiong (first taxi driver), Wang Jing [Wong Jing] (himself), Baliangjin [Ye Jingsheng] (special-effects technician), Lin Xiaofeng [Jerry Lamb] (assistant director), Che Baoluo (locksmith), He Nuoheng (locksmith’s son), Velarius Mitchell (black brothel client), Yuan Qiongdan (Momoko, brothel madame), Lin Xue [Lam Suet] (Biao), Jiang Yuecheng (second taxi driver), Zheng Danrui [Lawrence Cheng] (exhibition MC), Tian Qiwen (drone techie), Hao Jun (artist), Wu Yaohan [Richard Ng] (man in lift), Lin Ludi (exercising man), Zhan Ruiwen (Chen, fertility doctor), Zhuang Simin (Ying Yi’s assistant).

Release: China, 25 Sep 2015.