Moon Man
独行月球
China, 2022, colour, 2.35:1, 120 mins.
Director: Zhang Chiyu 张吃鱼.
Rating: 6/10.
Beijing troupe Ma Hua FunAge goes full-on sci-fi with a man stranded on the Moon, but the character comedy loses its edge in the second half despite the top cast.
STORY
China, some time in the future. Dugu Yue (Shen Teng), 34, a graduate in engineering from Shanghai’s Jiaotong university, applies for a job as an engineer on the United Nations Moon Shield, a project to use the Moon as a shield against asteroids hitting Earth. He’s offered a job as a maintenance man. The main purpose of UNMS is to deflect Pi (Π), a giant asteroid that’s just broken away from Mars’ orbit and is heading towards Earth. Eight years later super-weapon Cosmic Striking Hammer 宇宙之锤 is launched from the Moon to destroy Pi, so now Dugu Yue has time to concentrate on proposing to his secret love, Ma Lanxing (Ma Li), commander-in-chief of UNMS Asia. However, a solar storm causes the super-weapon to swerve from its course, with the result that an asteroid storm heads towards the Moon. Ma Lanxing orders an emergency evacuation of the 300 staff at the Moon base, but Dugu Yue doesn’t learn about it as he’s in his quarters with earphones on writing a love letter to Ma Lanxing. Despite a last-minute dash by moon buggy to join Ma Lanxing’s rocket, he is left behind. He survives the asteroid storm but sees Earth hit by Pi. Six days later he’s still not getting any reply from Earth and assumes human life has been extinguished. At the Moon base he enough food for 300 people for 114 days, so whiles away his time surfing on the Moon’s surface and eating. He then breaks into Ma Lanxing’s quarters and has aromantic dinner with a dummy with her face. In fact, all of this is being watched (though without sound) by Ma Lanxing and her team – including engineer Zhu Pite (Chang Yuan) and comms officer Wei Lasi (Lamuyangzi) – at UNMS Asia’s command centre back on Earth. Though Earth is in a dire state, with flooding and pollution, and some survivors living underground, UNMS Asia’s HQ has survived. Ma Lanxing is ordered by her superior, Sun Guangyang (Li Chengru), to live stream Dugu Yue’s everyday life, to inspire people on Earth. As there’s no sound, Ma Lanxing proposes bringing in a professional re-voicer, to create a heroic image for Dugu Yue. Thirty days later, on Day 196 of Dugu Yue’s solitary life on the Moon, streaming is about to begin. Dugu Yue is overweight from over-eating and still dreaming romantically about Ma Lanxing, and at the crucial moment the video feed is lost. When it resumes, Dugu Yue is seen talking to a red kangaroo. It turns out that the kangaroo, nicknamed King Kong Roo 金刚鼠 (Hao Han), was left behind during the emergency evacuation and has a reputation for being very temperamental. Adding to Ma Lanxing’s problems, the only surviving voice artist turns out to be an online influencer nicknamed The Flautist 葫芦丝 (Huang Cailun) who can only do funny voices. Despite all this, the live streaming draws rapt audiences among the underground survivors. Dugu Yue and King Kong Roo have various fights and arguments but by Day 224 they reach a kind of accommodation. And then Dugu Yue suddenly realises there is a way he can get back to Earth.
REVIEW
Beijing comedy troupe Ma Hua FunAge goes full-on sci-fi with Moon Man 独行月球, in which a space mechanic accidentally gets stranded on the Moon in a mass evacuation during an asteroid storm. Following the troupe’s CNY hit Too Cool to Kill 这个杀手不太冷静 (2022), which took a very hunky RMB2.62 billion, Moon Man has proved its biggest box-office success ever, hawling in RMB3.1 billion. Part of that is probably because two of Ma Hua’s biggest stars, actor Shen Teng 沈腾 and actress Ma Li 马丽, are both on board this one, though they don’t get much chance to directly interact and the production’s strong first half is let down by an over-long running time and over-messagey finale. On the plus side, the film boasts superb, natural-looking VFX. But overall it’s not up to the troupe’s best collaboration, time-travel lark Goodbye Mr. Loser 夏洛特烦恼 (2015, RMB1.43 billion), and only just scrapes level with their body-swap comedy Never Say Die 羞羞的铁拳 (2017, RMB2.2 billion).
On the surface Moon Man looks like a re-tread of the US film Mission to Mars (2000) with a Ma Hua ironic spin and Chinese re-calibration. In fact, the script by director Zhang Chiyu 张吃鱼 (“Fish-Eater Zhang”), with Qian Chenguang 钱晨光 (Ma Hua’s slick Hello, Mrs. Money 李茶的“姑妈”, 2018), Dai Si’ao 戴思奥 and Shen Yuyue 沈雨悦 (both of whom worked on Never Say Die), is based on a 66-episode webtoon, Moon You 문유 (2016-17), by popular South Korean graphic novelist Jo Seok 조석 | 赵石, 39. Whatever the source – and most of Ma Hua’s films have been based on either western classics or their own theatre productions – the team makes the subject matter its own, especially in the first 40 minutes that are the best of the whole film.
Shen’s straightfaced humour is perfect from the start as, at an unspecified time in the future, he applies for a job as an engineer on the UN’s Moon Shield project (to protect Earth from asteroids) but is offered a lowly maintenance job instead. Once on the Moon he falls hopelessly for UNMS Asia’s ballsy commander (Ma, with a nuclear stare) and is so busy penning her a love letter that he misses a hurried evacuation of the Moon base’s entire personnel, including his loved one. He survives, but later watches as Earth is hit by a giant asteroid and civilisation sent back to the Dark Ages. Initially thinking he’s stranded for good, he then befriends the Moon base’s only other survivor, a bad-tempered kangaroo.
It’s a wonderful set-up in the first half-hour, especially when Shen’s character and the kangaroo then face off in an escalating series of battles – climaxing in a laugh-out-loud moment when the latter unfurls a banner (“Smile in the face of death!” 笑九泉) when it’s threatened by Shen in Rambo mode. The script manages to maintain its invention as the mechanic and King Kong Roo 金刚鼠 become pals, prior to the former, now in contact with Earth and his loved one, realising there may be a way he can get back home. Hereon, however, the film gradually becomes more conventionally tech-driven than character-based, and the third act, when full sound and vision are re-established between Earth and Moon, is a pretty rote exercise in one-man-saving-the-planet.
Part of the overall problem is that Shen and Ma are largely separated during the film, not only by space but also by lack of sound. Only the final act does their “relationship” (as he sees it) get a chance to develop, but by then the main drama is so cranked up that it hardly stands a chance. Ma Hua’s best films are all built on subtleties of character comedy, and in Moon Man there’s often more going on between Shen’s character and the kangaroo than there is between him and Ma’s. No Chinese actress is better than Ma at withering comic stares, but here one just wants more between her and Shen.
Some individual moments in the first half are memorable, such as Shen’s character dressing up as a female kangaroo and his Rambo parody with a 3-D-printed Gatling gun. Despite all the messaging (never give up, you are never alone etc.), the ending, too, has some undeniably moving moments, as well as a return-to-the-Moon coda with an Asian slant for a change. Supporting roles are very much that, with Ma Hua regular Chang Yuan 常远 (director and star of Warm Hug 温暖的抱抱, 2020) good as a sidekick to Ma’s commander and Inner Mongolian comedienne Lamuyangzi 辣目洋子 (Fat Buddies 胖子行动队, 2018; My Blue Summer 暗恋 橘生淮南, 2022) ditto as a female sidekick. Ma Hua’s Huang Cailun 黄才伦 (Hello, Mrs. Money) has his comic moments as a useless voice artist brought in to dub Shen’s character during live streaming. However, a group of survivors on Earth who watch the live stream looks too obviously like a script device to broaden the narrative; it simply gets in the way without adding anything.
Writer-director Zhang, 36, previously co-wrote and co-directed Never Say Die, which he and Song Yang 宋阳 had earlier staged in Beijing. Technical credits, as well as the kangaroo SFX and natural-look sci-fi VFX, are all top notch, with the widescreen photography by top Mainland d.p. Du Jie 杜杰 giving the whole thing a realistic feel that fits the comedy.
CREDITS
Presented by Zhejiang FunAge Pictures (CN), China Film (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Shanghai Ruyi Film & TV Production (CN), Tianjin Maoyan Weiying Cultural Media (CN), Slinky Town Pictures (Tianjin) (CN). Produced by Zhejiang FunAge Pictures (CN).
Script: Zhang Chiyu, Qian Chenguang, Dai Si’ao, Shen Yuyue. Manga: Jo Seok. Photography: Du Jie. Editing: Tu Yiran. Music: Peng Fei. Production design: Li Miao. Costume design: Liang Tingting. Sound: Yang Jiang, Zhao Nan. Action: Liu Mingzhe. Special effects: Zhang Tao. Visual effects: Wei Ming, Cai Meng, Zhang Fan, Shi Wen. Main/end titles: Wang Lei.
Cast: Shen Teng (Dugu Yue), Ma Li (Ma Lanxing, UNMS commander-in-chief), Chang Yuan (Zhu Pite, engineer), Li Chengru (Sun Guangyang, UNMS Asia director), Huang Cailun (Hulusi/The Flautist), Lamuyangzi (Wei Lasi), Hao Han (Jingang Shu/King Kong Roo), Huang Zitao (A-category idol), Wang Chengsi (idol’s agent), Gao Haibao (level 8 mechanical fitter), Yang Zheng (level 3 mechanical fitter), Shi Pengyuan (Putao’s older brother), Zhang Xiran (young Putao/Grape), Huang Pinyuan (tower keeper), Yang Haoyu (job interviewer), Xu Zhisheng (talk-show performer), Du Xiaoyu (Du Xiaoyu, astronomer), Li Haiyin (level 8 mechanical fitter’s wife), Wang Zan, Tao Liang (engineers), Li Weihe (Thai father), Chen Haoming (Thai mother), Meng Zhixu (refugee girl), Zhao Yilin (older Putao/Grape), Wu Peijun (Thai boy).
Release: China, 29 Jul 2022.