Jianbing Man

煎饼侠

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

Director: Da Peng 大鹏 [Dong Chengpeng 董成鹏].

Rating: 7/10.

Mainland superhero parody, centred on celebrity culture, is good, silly fun.

STORY

Beijing, the present day. Popular TV personality Da Peng (Da Peng) is invited by gangster businessman Wang Hai (Liang Chao) to make a film in which he will invest. Wang Hai insists that Da Peng’s co-star is TV drama actress Du Xiaoxiao (Yuan Shanshan). However, after a nightclub scandal involving Da Peng goes viral, he’s blackballed by a powerful internet executive (Zhang Chaoyang) and finds himself unable to attract any male co-star. Wang Hai also wants his investment back. Da Peng decides to make his own movie on the cheap, using a script he has about an alien, Li, who arrives on Earth and has various adventures as a superhero. A paparazzo, Ma Tao (Yi Yunhe), joins the production group and Da Peng persuades Du Xiaoxiao to play Xiaoyi, the owner of a jianbing (pancake) stall who becomes brainwashed by the alien, played by Da Peng himself, and is transformed into his sidekick, superheroine Red Rose. In order to film some star names on the cheap, Da Peng and his team hijack Hong Kong actress Wu Junru [Sandra Ng] when she’s jogging outside her hotel and try to stage a rape-and-rescue scene around her. When that fails, they try the same thing with another Hong Kong film-maker, Zeng Zhiwei [Eric Tsang]. After trying to get more free help from veteran Beijing Film Studio actor Wei Yunxiang, fight choreographer Yue Yunpeng and actress Liu Yan, Da Peng finally runs out of money and starts working as a host at funerals. His career looks at a dead end.

REVIEW

China gets its first superhero parody with Jianbing Man 煎饼侠, joining a small club of Asian films – including Hong Kong’s 92 Legendary La Rose Noire 92黑玫瑰对黑玫瑰 (1992), the Philippines’ Gagamboy (2004) and Japan’s HK: Forbidden Super Hero 变态仮面 (2013) – that have taken various comic spins on the US invention. In Jianbing Man, the slant is celebrity culture rather than social justice or sexual confusion, as a TV star who’s down on his luck tries to revive his career by making a superhero movie on the cheap. Packed with Mainland names (many of whom will mean little to offshore audiences), local references and risque gags, Jianbing Man is a slick package that’s terminally silly but highly entertaining, driven by the out-sized personality and surreal imagination of writer-director-star Da Peng 大鹏 (aka Dong Chengpeng 董成鹏), 33, a comedian-presenter best known for his tv.sohu.com online sketch show Diors Man 屌丝男士 (2012-15), who here makes his big-screen directing debut.

Kitted out with his trademark big specs, Da Peng plays a version of his own persona – here a cocky celebrity who agrees to make a movie funded by a gangster (Liang Chao 梁超, the louche self-improvement promoter in The Breakup Guru 分手大师) but, after having his career wrecked by a nightclub scandal, decides to make a superhero film on a zero budget while being pursued by the gangster who wants his money back. The plot is basically an excuse for a series of sketches, liberally filled with cameos that also include a handful of non-Mainlanders, including Hong Kong’s Wu Junru 吴君如 [Sandra Ng] and Zeng Zhiwei 曾志伟 [Eric Tsang], Taiwan’s Guo Caijie 郭采洁 [Amber Kuo] as the star’s luxury-loving wife, and even Belgian action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, still looking trim in his mid-50s. Herself a mistress of parody, Wu is especially good in her segment, mispronouncing Jianbing Man’s Mandarin name and hitting the right tone of nonsense comedy.

Despite the inclusion of some offshore names, and more Hong Kong cameos at the end, the movie is totally angled towards Mainland audiences, both in its casting and humour. (Like Diors Man, even the film’s title – which literally means “Pan Crepe Hero”, referring to the popular northern street snack – has a scatalogical double meaning in Mandarin.) With cameos ranging from sohu.com founder Zhang Chaoyang 张朝阳 [Charles Zhang] and bad-boy writer-director Han Han 韩寒 (The Continent), through stars like Deng Chao 邓超 and various stand-up comedians, the humour is broad but likeable, and the technical side suprisingly accomplished, both on a klutzy action level and in the smooth editing. The film even manages to bring its scattergun structure together with a song montage at the end that provides a kind of emotional climax.

CREDITS

Presented by Tianjin Golden Fox Culture (CN), New Classics Media (CN), Wanda Pictures (CN).

Script: Su Biao, Da Peng [Dong Chengpeng]. Photography: Chen Dan. Editing: Tu Yiran. Music: Zhao Yingjun. Sound: Lin Xuelin. Action: Chen Shuo.

Cast: Da Peng [Dong Chengpeng] (Da Peng), Yuan Shanshan (Du Xiaoxiao), Liu Yan (herself), Guo Caijie [Amber Kuo] (Da Peng’s wife), Yi Yunhe (Ma Tao), Cui Zhijia (Hu Lai), Jean-Claude Van Damme (himself), Pan Binlong (Dong Chenglong, Da Peng’s manager), Qiao Shan (Huahua, Wang Hai’s assistant), Liang Chao (Wang Hai), Yue Yunpeng (himself), Wu Junru [Sandra Ng] (herself), Zeng Zhiwei [Eric Tsang] (himself), Xiaoshenyang (Spicy Little Dragon; himself), Wang Xiaoli (Hero No. 2; himself), Song Xiaobao (Comic Hero; himself), Liu Xiaoguang (Turtle Hero; himself), Han Han, Chen Sicheng, Deng Chao, Lin Gengxin, Bao Bei’er, Chen He, Zheng Kai, Hu Haiquan, Chen Yufan, Zhang Chaoyang [Charles Zhang], Zheng Yijian [Ekin Cheng], Chen Xiaochun [Jordan Chan], Lin Xiaofeng [Jerry Lamb], Xie Tianhua, Wei Yunxiang (themselves), Wang Deshun (Daoist).

Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (I-SIFF), 16 Jun 2015.

Release: China, 17 Jul 2015.

(Review originally published on Film Business Asia, 6 Jul 2015.)