Hello Mr. Billionaire

西虹市首富

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 116 mins.

Directors: Yan Fei 闫非, Peng Damo 彭大魔.

Rating: 7/10.

Satire on money and instant success is a fine showpiece for comic actor Shen Teng.

STORY

Xihong city, somewhere in China, the present day. Down-on-his-luck Wang Duoyu (Shen Teng), 37, a goalkeeper for local C-rated football team Daxiang, has finally been sacked by his trainer (Wei Xiang) after accepting a RMB200,000 bribe to throw a match – the latest in a series of scandals he’s been involved in, including dressing in drag for a women’s football match. His best friend Zhuang Qing (Zhang Yiming) threatens to resign from the club, and his offer is gratefully accepted by the trainer. After Wang Duoyu attacks a traffic-accident conman, and the incident is filmed by a passer-by, he’s arrested. However, he’s bailed out by Jin (Zhang Jingguang), head of insurance giant Xihong Life, who informs him he’s been left everything by a long-lost second grandfather (Li Liqun), an insurance billionaire who recently died in Taiwan. The will stipulates that, if he can spend RMB1 billion within a month, he will inherit a full RMB30 billion. The conditions are that he must spend every cent of the money legally in Xihong city; must make no gifts or charitable donations; can hire no more than 100 people; must not destroy any valuable investments, like fine art; and must not tell anyone else about the challenge. If he decides not to accept, he will walk away with RMB10 million; if he accepts but fails the challenge, he’ll get nothing. Wang Duoyu accepts, and Jin appoints his chief accountant, Xia Zhu (Song Yunhua) from Taiwan, to monitor his spending, though she is not told about the challenge. She happens to be the passer-by who filmed him attacking the conman. Wang Duoyu immediately takes over his former football team with a view to challenging Daxiang’s rival, the highly-rated Hengtai from Guangzhou, to a RMB10 million match. He also rents the most exclusive hotel in the city, and makes Zhuang Qing his CEO. Xia Zhu’s boyfriend, Liu Jiannan (Chang Yuan), is a high-minded educationalist who preaches that money isn’t everything, for which she admires him; Wang Duoyu destroys their relationship by getting him to work as a gardener for a huge salary. He also buys shares in failing businesses and invests in crazy schemes like “land swimming”. Unfortunately, his shares in the companies boom and the mad schemes are successful, so he appoints Zhang Qing’s old schoolmate Big Brain (Wang Chengsi) as his CFO, hoping he’s as stupid as Zhuang Qing. He also extravagantly courts Xia Zhu, who still cannot understand why he enjoys losing money. But then Big Brain informs Wang Duoyu that he’s just made RMB1 billion.

REVIEW

After 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), Beijing-based theatre company Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花 returns with another satire on underdog success called, fittingly, Hello Mr. Billionaire 西虹市首富. The latest adaptation of US writer George Barr McCutcheon’s much-filmed 1902 novel Brewster’s Millions, the story of a hopeless non-achiever who inherits a fortune if he can first prove he can lose a sizeable sum fits perfectly with the Mainland’s current rush-to-riches Zeitgeist, as well as being a fine showpiece for Ma Hua’s now very bankable star, character comedian Shen Teng 沈腾 (Loser; Heart for Heaven 一念天堂, 2015; Die).

Though Shen isn’t paired this time with his frequent screen partner, comedienne Ma Li 马丽 – another longtime Ma Hua member – the film is less of a mixed bag than Die and, despite its potentially brassier content, manages to recapture the humour and likeability of Loser and its characters. Maybe that’s because, unlike Die, Billionaire is written and directed by the team behind Loser, Yan Fei 闫非 and Peng Damo 彭大魔, both Ma Hua members who remain steeped in the company’s satirical ethos even when operating with a bigger budget. Despite some weaknesses of its own – notably the multiple gymnastics that the script goes through in the second half, including a 16-minute football climax that turns out not to be the climax, and a manufactured kidnap finale – Billionaire is still a considerable accomplishment for two film-makers on only their second production – all the more so given it’s their first big-screen original rather than an adaptation of an earlier theatre piece.

Mainland box office has been explosive, with RMB1.8 billion in the film’s first nine days – already more than the total for Loser (RMB1.4 billion) and set to surpass that for Die (RMB2.2 billion). Even more notably for the industry itself, it’s so far earned almost four times as much as Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings 狄仁杰之四大天王, released the same day, underlining a noticeable trend in the Mainland – viz. Dying to Survive 我不是药神 (2017) – towards local, character-driven comedies and away from splashy VFX vehicles and rote franchises. [Final tally, after 73 days, was RMB2.55 billion.]

As well as stage and TV adaptations, McCutcheon’s satire on money and success has fuelled at least a dozen films, half of them by the US alone. (Mark Twain’s similarly satirical short story The Million Pound Bank Note has also proved a popular adaptee.) Despite its universal theme, McCutcheon’s novel is a particularly apposite fit for the Mainland’s current money fever, as well as providing fertile opportunities for mocking nouveau riche vulgarity, the culture of instant success or failure, and the popular dislike of those who parade their wealth. None of these are new themes in Mainland cinema, but it’s Shen’s performance that gives them a fresh spin.

The 38-year-old actor is in his element as a dodgy, but so far unsuccessful, opportunist who suddenly finds he’s been willed a fortune by a second grandfather he never knew he had (a deliciously nasty cameo by Taiwan veteran Li Liqun 李立群). Shen’s straightfaced, posey humour is at its best in the numerous sight gags, especially in the first half; but he can also handle pun-filled dialogue (like an extensive joke on the heroine’s name when they’re first introduced) and is enough of a real actor to sustain the expected shift in the second half towards the theme of “making a choice between money and humanity 人性”, corny as it may be. That’s because the film never takes itself too seriously even when it’s being more serious – something the rest of the cast also understands – and beneath everything there’s a likeable undercurrent of rather sweet simplicity.

Young Taiwan actress Song Yunhua 宋芸桦, 25, may lack the mature chemistry that an experienced actress like Ma has with Shen but in her short career she’s shown a freshness (the student in Cafe. Waiting. Love 等  一个人  咖啡, 2014; her breakout lead in Our Times 我的少女时代, 2015) that plays well with Shen’s more mannered style, as well as proving that, as in the recent The Way of the Bug 猛虫过江 (2018), she can hold her own amid a colourful Mainland cast. The latter includes actor-director Zhang Yiming 张一鸣, 41, as the lead’s stupid best pal, plus Ma Hua members Wei Xiang 魏翔, Wang Chengsi 王成思 and the younger Chang Yuan 常远 as a football trainer, investment adviser and high-minded educationalist. Among those providing cameo colour are Taiwan veterans Zhao Ziqiang 赵自强 and Jiu Kong 九孔 [Lv Kongwei 吕孔维] as two trust-fund managers.

Using several key crew from Loser, like d.p. Sun Ming 孙明 and art director Wang Shuo 王硕, as well as skilled editor Tu Yiran 屠亦然 (Some Like It Hot 情圣, 2016; City of Rock 缝纫机乐队, 2017), Billionaire is technically slicker than the earlier film but not at the expense of the character humour. The fictional setting of Xihong city 西虹市 – which in Mandarin sounds exactly like the word for “tomato” 西红柿 – first appeared in Loser and is also the Chinese name for Shen’s production company Slinky Town Pictures 西虹市影视. The film’s Chinese title (“Xihong City Billionaire”) thus also sounds like “Tomato Billionaire”. The movie was actually shot down south in Xiamen, Fujian province.

CREDITS

Presented by Starry Entertainment (CN), Slinky Town Pictures (CN), Beijing Fun Age Pictures (CN), New Classics Media (CN), Shanghai Alibaba Pictures (CN).

Script: Peng Damo, Yan Fei, Lin Bingbao. Novel: George Barr McCutcheon. Photography: Sun Ming. Editing: Tu Yiran. Music: Peng Fei. Art direction: Wang Shuo. Styling: Wen Nianzhong [Man Lim-chung]. Sound: Yang Jiang, Zhao Nan. Action: Zhuang Yuanzheng. Visual effects: Zhou Yifu. Executive direction: Qian Ru.

Cast: Shen Teng (Wang Duoyu), Song Yunhua (Xia Zhu), Zhang Yiming (Zhuang Qing), Zhang Jingguang (Jin), Chang Yuan (Liu Jiannan), Wei Xiang (football trainer), Zhao Ziqiang (Yin), Jiu Kong [Lv Kongwei] (Lai), Li Liqun (second grandfather), Wang Chengsi (Da Congming/Big Brain), Xu Dongdong (Shasha), Ai Lun (Gao Ran, Hengtai footballer), Yang Haoyu (traffic-accident conman), Huang Cailun (football commentator), Bao Bei’er (Xiaobao), Yang Wenzhe (stock-market specialist), Tao Liang (land-swimming inventor), Wang Zan (castle manager), Wang Lihong (himself).

Release: China, 27 Jul 2018.