Wonder Family
超能一家人
China, 2023, colour, 2.35:1, 111 mins.
Director: Song Yang 宋阳.
Rating: 5/10.
Ma Hua FunAge comedy about a crazy family with super powers has a good first hour or so but is sunk by a VFX-fest action finale that’s atypical of the troupe’s films.
STORY
Shanghai, the present day. Zheng Qian (Ai Lun) was born in a small, snow-covered, Russian-speaking country called Kasichka, as his grandfather had followed the Russian army there 70 years ago. But because his family was very dysfunctional – father Zheng Deyi (Han Yanbo) was an alcoholic, grandfather Zheng Fa (Zhang Qi) an over-righteous prig, elder sister Zheng Luoman (Tao Hui) a self-centred ballerina who thought she was a princess – Zheng Qian left Kasichka seven years ago and moved to China. He has since developed a financial management app, HiiiPay, for which he receives an offer from a Mongolian investor, Teng (Tenger), to help him set up his own company. Suddenly, however, Zheng Luoman calls to tell him that their grandfather is dead. Zheng Qian returns to Kasichka for the funeral, at which he meets “Slippery” Chichikov (Shen Teng), the China-loving chairman of the local Chamber of Commerce, who says he wants Zheng Qian’s app – at any cost – to use for money-laundering. He gives Zheng Qian two days to decide yes. Zheng Qian stays at the large family cottage in the countryside, where he finds his father has adopted a crazy local girl, Tianhou (Polina), he found on the street two years ago. During an argument between Zheng Qian and his father, the former’s computer is smashed. That night there’s a magical meteorite shower, which is meant to bring good luck, and next day the grandfather appears in the cottage fit and well. The family discover they all have magical powers: Zheng Fa is immortal, Zheng Deyi can become invisible, Zheng Luoman can fly, and Tianhou has super-strength. Zheng Qian has no super-power, and the others lose theirs unless the whole family stays in close proximity to each other. After trying to go back to Shanghai, he’s prevented from leaving the country at the airport. There he’s approached by a private detective, Bobrova (Anastasia Sedikova), who offers to protect him from Chichikov, as she knows he is after Zheng Qian’s app and will kill him once he gets it. Zheng Qian returns, with Bobrova, to the family cottage and is given a further three days by Chichikov to decide. Bobrova suggests Zheng Qian steals Chichikov’s money-landering book as evidence against him. But to do that Zheng Qian will need the help of his whole family and their magical powers. Also, Bobrova reveals that Chichikov killed her father 20 years ago and she wants revenge.
REVIEW
The latest big-screen outing by Beijing-based theatre company Ma Hua FunAge 开心麻花 – whose first foray into film production was time-travel comedy Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼 (2015) – is up there with the best of their movies for a lot of the time before throwing everything away with a crazed final half-hour of o.t.t. action, VFX and dreadful rock music that are completely alien to the troupe’s character-based comedy. Directed by Ma Hua FunAge stalwart Song Yang 宋阳, a writer, director and actor who co-directed the troupe’s very variable second movie (Never Say Die 羞羞的铁拳, 2017) and played one of the main characters in the highly entertaining Hello, Mrs. Money 李茶的“姑妈” (2018), Wonder Family 超能一家人 sank at the summer box office with just RMB300 million, a very polite figure considering the troupe’s films regularly score in the billions. (The last one, Moon Man 独行月球, 2022, took a cool RMB3.1 billion.) This is all a bit unfortunate for a movie meant to celebrate Ma Hua FunAge’s 20th anniversary as a theatre group.
Like several of its film productions, this one is also (very) freely based on a foreign original – fleetingly acknowledged in the end titles – in this case the Russian fantasy comedy Super Bobrovs Супер Бобровы (2016, aka Superfamily, see poster, left), a nicely shot widescreen movie directed by Dmitri Dyachenko Дмитрий Дьяченко, in which a screwy family gains magical powers after a meteorite shower and uses them to rob a bank to get the daughter’s criminal boyfriend out of a sticky situation. (It was followed by a 2018 sequel, in which the family, on the run, sets up in Thailand.) The script, by Song and four others (none with much film writing experience), takes only the basic idea of a crazy family gaining super powers and using them in a robbery but serves up a much richer plot. For some reason it maintains a Russian-speaking setting (the fictional country Kasichka), despite the family being Chinese – which leads to some awkward script contortions but does at least provide one of the film’s cherries, a performance (in heavy Caucasian make-up) by Ma Hua FunAge’s top star Shen Teng 沈腾 as the smiling super-villain.
Not for the first time, Shen steals every scene he’s in, from his introduction as “Slippery” Chichikov, sliding into the splits as he leaves his limo, to later moments in his luxurious mansion that the family decides to rob during a reception. Alas, Shen’s frequent (and best) screen partner, actress Ma Li 马丽, only appears in a cameo during the end titles, so Shen has no one to regularly bounce off of apart from Ma Hu FunAge regular Ai Lun 艾伦, a serviceable but not quite top-notch comedian whose poe-faced humour fits awkwardly with Shen’s. Still, he’s generally okay in the main role, as the family’s loose sheep who’s just returned from Shanghai for his grandpa’s funeral and has developed an app that Chichikov wants for money laundering.
The family’s magical powers – which are roughly, but not exactly, the same as those in the original Russian film – provide an excuse for lots of comic VFX in the first half. But it’s their lively characters that mainly power the movie (the alcoholic father, self-righteous grandpa, argumentative elder sister) and shore up the central themes of home and family, of staying together through thick and thin. These themes are built into the basic plot – as the family’s magical powers only work when they’re in physical proximity to each other – but they’re much more accentuated here than in the Russian original, and with a very Chinese flavour. The final half-hour throws most of this away, as well as introducing a plot twist, a new villain, and generally playing like a sequel rather than a finale. The film effectively ends around the 75-minute mark with the big heist at Chichikov’s mansion, a 20-minute setpiece that’s nicely staged with plenty of reversals and character comedy. With its excessive VFX and out-of-nowhere rock score, the final half-hour feels like a tacked-on Big Finish demanded by the producers.
Though Shen and Ai Lun dominate the performances, the family members are all engagingly portrayed, from actress-dancer Tao Hui 陶慧 (the showgirl in Breakup Buddies 心花路放, 2014) as the stroppy ballerina sister, through Zhang Qi 张琪 as the grandfather who can’t stay dead, to Han Yanbo 韩彦博 (the fiancee’s father in Hello, Mrs. Money) as the alky father. Chinese-speaking Ukrainian actress-dancer Anastasia Sedikova 康晞娅, 32, who’s been working in routine Mainland films and TV since 2015 (The First Time 破天荒, 2018; The Couple Travel Together 侣行攻略之确认你是我的人, 2019), shows real star presence here. In for a cameo as a billionaire investor who works from a Shanghai yurt is Inner Mongolian actor Tenger 腾格尔.
Technically, it’s all well-appointed, from the textured widescreen photography by Hong Kong’s Zhang Ying 张颖 (Dealer/Healer 毒。诫, 2017; Sheep without a Shepherd 误杀, 2019) that underscores the fairytale feel of the proceedings, to the production design by Taiwan’s Huang Meiqing 黄美清 and her deputy Zheng Jiazheng 郑嘉政, styling by Kong Lingyuan 孔令媛 (Nice to Meet You 遇见你真好, 2018) and editing by Tan Xiangyuan 檀向媛 (Love Never Ends 我爱你！, 2023), with her former chief, Hong Kong veteran Xu Hongyu 许宏宇 [Derek Hui] credited as advisor.
The film shot for over 170 days, in China and Russia (with a sizeable Russian crew), and wrapped in late Jan 2021.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhejiang FunAge Pictures (CN), China Film (CN), Shanghai Alibaba Pictures (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN). Produced by Zhejiang FunAge Pictures (CN).
Script: Song Yang, Bi Kang, Dong Wenteng, Zhao Yue, Jia Jinjin. Photography: Zhang Ying. Editing: Tan Xiangyuan. Editing advice: Xu Hongyu [Derek Hui]. Music: Dong Dongdong. Production design: Huang Meiqing. Art direction: Zheng Jiazheng. Styling: Kong Lingyuan. Sound: Zhao Nan, Yang Jiang. Action: Wu Gang. Visual effects: Yang Zhi, Qiao Feng. Executive direction: Chu Wenming, Zhang Chaoli.
Cast: Ai Lun (Zheng Qian), Shen Teng (Chichikov), Tao Hui (Zheng Luoman, elder sister), Zhang Qi (Zheng Fa, grandfather), Han Yanbo (Zheng Deyi, father), Polina (Tianhou, adopted younger sister), Anastasia Sedikova (Nastasya Nikolayevna Bobrova), Andrey Lazarev (Piyushkin), Tenger (Teng, Mongolian investor), Ma Li, Xiang Wei (voice artists), Chang Yuan (Zheng Qian’s secretary).
Release: China, 21 Jul 2023.