The Human Comedy

人间•喜剧

China, 2019, colour, 2.35:1, 89 mins.

Director: Sun Zhou 孙周.

Rating: 4/10.

Knockabout-cum-crime caper is bumpily written and flatly directed, with no feel for comic rhythm.

STORY

Guangzhou city, Guangdong province, southern China, the present day. Pu Tong (Ai Lun) broadcasts from home on Curry FM, a soothing phone-in show in which he dispenses advice. His private life isn’t as rosy: he’s owed RMB21,000 back-pay by his boss Wang (Shi Hang) and is RMB12,600 behind on his rent. His wife Mi Li (Wang Zhi), who works as an assistant in a big company, is almost 30 and is pregnant, though she hasn’t yet told Pu Tong and is tired of perpetually being in debt. When Pu Tong hears Wang has gone bust, he rushes round to the office to try to get his back-pay. By chance he bumps into Yang Xiaowei (Lu Nuo), a spoiled rich kid who works there and is also trying to get some money from Wang, as his father Yang Taijun (Jin Shijie) – who is actually the secret backer of the company – refuses to pay any more of his spendthrift son’s debts. (Yang Xiaowei owes gangster Ba Shan [Ren Dahua] RMB1 million, and the latter has ordered two of his thugs to accompany Yang Xiaowei until he finds the money.) Pu Tong ends up falling in with Yang Xiaowei and that night, after getting drunk together, Pu Tong ends up knocking the thugs out and “kidnapping” Yang Xiaowei. When Pu Tong wakes up next morning with Yang Xiaowei in his home, he can’t remember anything, though the latter’s supposed “kidnap” is on the TV news. Yang Xiaowei is delighted, as it gives him a chance to extort some money from his father. He offers Pu Tong a 30/70 split of the proceeds. Initially unwilling to play the game, Pu Tong gets caught up in it, especially when Ba Shan encourages the idea in order to get his money back. Meanwhile, Mi Li learns she’s RMB8,000 overdrawn at the bank, so reluctantly also joins in the scam. Pu Tong demands a ransom of RMB10 million, but Yang Taijun refuses to pay, as his son has staged phoney kidnappings before. Only when Mi Li threatens to scandalise the Yang family name by raping Yang Xiaowei on camera does the father agree. But when Pu Tong meets Yang Taijun for the handover, the latter says he intends to legally cut off all ties with his son; by using his frozen sperm, he plans to father a second son to take Yang Xiaowei’s place and donate RMB10 million to a charitable foundation instead. Pu Tong and Yang Xiaowei then try to steal Yang Taijun’s sample from the sperm bank, not knowing that it’s just been exchanged by two thieves (Pan Binlong, Wang Boxiao) for a sperm sample kept by Ba Shan, who was seriously wounded in the groin seven years earlier and dreams of fathering a child.

REVIEW

Best known for his long association with Beijing-based theatre company Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花, in whose hit films he’s also appeared (Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼, 2015; Never Say Die 羞羞的铁拳, 2017), comedian Ai Lun 艾伦, 36, proves in The Human Comedy 人间•喜剧 that – unlike, say, his Ma Hua colleague Shen Teng 沈腾 – he’s more of an ensemble player or colourful support than a leading man. Best known for goofy or camp roles, he hasn’t quite got the extra star oomph to carry a film, especially one as bumpily written and flatly directed as this. Despite some individual moments, The Human Comedy is neither especially well-observed or particularly funny. Unrelated to the 2010 Hong Kong film of the same name starring Du Wenze 杜汶泽 [Chapman To] – let alone Balzac’s famous series of novels – it’s quickly nose-dived at the Mainland box office, reaping a paltry RMB63 million.

Playing a genial loser who hosts a phone-in radio programme from his flat and finds himself caught up in a kidnapping scam organised by an indebted rich kid, Ai Lun goes through his usual schtick reliably enough, and is at his best in scenes that exploit his talent for absurdist comedy (smooth radio patter, or stuck in a hole in a wall). But he’s ill-served by a screenplay that’s all over the place, starting as a scam comedy and then swerving off into a series of knockabout sketches centred on mixed-up sperm-bank donations. (Don’t even ask.) After basically wrapping up the plot around the 75-minute mark, the script is then padded out for a further 10 minutes with moralising and reformed characters plus a romantic Happy End.

Almost kept on track in the early stages by some veteran performers – Hong Kong’s Ren Dahua 任达华 [Simon Yam] as a village butcher-turned-gangster, and especially Taiwan’s Jin Shijie 金士杰 as the rich kid’s crafty father – the film is fatally flawed by the lack of any special chemistry between Ai Lun and, as the fuerdai, half-German actor-model Lu Nuo 鲁诺, 32 (who played a similar role in high-school movie Growing Pains 会痛的十七岁, 2017). As a fair bit of the film is made up of the two characters spatting around, this doesn’t help one bit – and isn’t mitigated by having female lead Wang Zhi 王智 in a weakly written part as the loser’s wife. Wang, 33, previously known as Wang Zixuan 王紫瑄, trained in martial arts before graduating from the Central Academy of Drama, and has played both action roles and comedy (including Goodbye Mr. Loser and Never Say Die), but here she’s stuck in a role that (despite the film’s poster) becomes just a spectator to all the male pranks. Her one standout scene, where she pretends to rape the rich kid to force his dad to pay up, is unfortunately brief.

The final nail in the film’s coffin is the direction by veteran Mainland film-maker Sun Zhou 孙周, 64, whose spread-out career has included some real beauties in a wide variety of genres (Heartstrings 心香, 1992; Zhou Yu’s Train 周渔的火车, 2002; Qiuxi 秋喜, 2009; I Do 我愿意, 2012). But Sun is patently not at home in goofy or knockabout comedy (Impossible 不可思异, 2015). His direction has no feel for comic timing and the film, more surprisingly, even lacks his usual visual richness.

CREDITS

Presented by Wanda Pictures (CN), Beijing Hanyu International Culture Media (CN).

Script: Cao Peng, Geng Hongming, Sun Zhou, Zhang Zongqian. Music: Guo Xiaoying.

Cast: Ai Lun (Pu Tong), Wang Zhi (Mi Li), Lu Nuo (Yang Xiaowei), Ren Dahua [Simon Yam] (Ba Shan), Jin Shijie (Yang Taijun), Pan Binlong (Xu Dafa, thief), Wang Boxiao (Xu Dafa’s younger brother), Zhou Xianxin (Shishi), Feng Bo (Tian Yu), Liu Guancheng (Xiang), Zhang Chen (Heizi), Dong Lifan (Ma, sperm-bank supervisor), Shi Hang (Wang, manager), Luo Jingmin (Pu Tong’s father).

Release: China, 29 Mar 2019.