The Faces of My Gene

祖宗十九代

China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 94 mins.

Director: Guo Degang 郭德纲.

Rating: 5/10.

Mildly funny, cameo-laden CNY spoof of costume genres becomes increasingly repetitive.

STORY

A city in China, the present day. Absent-minded but talented writer Bei Xiaobei (Yue Yunpeng) has been successfully ghost-writing for handsome young Lei (Jing Boran) for years. Despite the success of his latest opus, Inside the North Bamboo Forest 北竹林内, the publisher (Huang Lei) still won’t let Bei Xiaobei write a book under his own name as everyone says he’s so ugly. Bei Xiaobei dreams of his friend Liya (Lin Zhiling) becoming his girlfriend, though even she says he’s not handsome. His doctor father (Zhang Guoli) blames it all on his wife’s genes. Going through some old family documents, Bei Xiaobei comes across a family genealogical album and the name of his maternal grandfather, Mei Xingfu. Bei Xiaobei passes out and wakes up in 1931 Republican China at Yanbei University where Mei Xingfu (Ou Hansheng) is a professor who’s in love with tubby fellow professor Wang Gangtie (Hu Shanshan). Bei Xiaobei decides to retrospectively change his genes by getting Mei Xingfu to marry pretty poetry student Lili (Ma Su) who adores him, but local crimelord Feng Jiuye (Yu Qian) gets in the way with his passion for Lili. Bei Xiaobei is then swept back to Qing-era, 18th-century China where he meets an earlier relative, Mei Xiwang (Du Chun), who’s in love with plucky Huang Zi’an (Zhang Li) but is too timid to declare himself. Bei Xiaobei is next swept back a few hundred years to Ming-era China where he meets an even earlier relative, Mei Banfa (Wu Jing), a well-known swordsman who’s forced to fight fellow swordsman Wang Baobao (Guo Qilin) over the ugly Tong Tiechui (Liu Bei); Bei Xiaobei tries to get Wang Baobao to win so his relative won’t have to marry her. Next, Bei Xiaobei is swept back to the 4th-century Jin dynasty where distant relative Mei Qiantu (Wu Xiubo) is a country doctor whose wife has been away in the imperial palace for the opast year. When he’s finally summoned to cure the overweight emperor regent (Sun Yue), Bei Xiaobei accompanies him and finds that Mei Qiantu’s wife (Xie Yilin) is no beauty but is dearly loved by him. Finally, Bei Xiaobei is transported back to the mythical age, where he meets various heavenly spirits, including Nv Wa (Wu Junru) who created Man.

REVIEW

Looks aren’t everything is the message behind The Faces of My Gene 祖宗十九代, a CNY comedy centred on a podgy writer who tries to alter his mum’s “ugly” genes as he travels back in time. A starring vehicle for dim-looking Mainland stand-up comic Yue Yunpeng 岳云鹏 – whose only other lead role has been in the routine comedy-romance Revenge for Love 疯岳撬佳人 (2017) – the film comes so loaded with cameo appearances that the putative star is more an onlooker than the real protagonist. In the event, that’s just as well, as Yue still can’t carry a movie on his own; the bigger problem is that the central idea becomes increasingly repetitive as Our Hero goes further and further back in time. Working with many of his regular acting colleagues, cross-talk comedian-presenter Guo Degang 郭德纲, 45, whose last directing gig was The Love of Three Smile: Scholar and the Beauty 三笑之才子佳人 (2010), packages the whole thing in an unimaginative way that doesn’t add any comic bounce. The film earned only a polite RMB170 million over the holiday period.

The film is basically a collection of parodies of Chinese costume genres. After setting up Our Hero’s frustration at having to ghost-write for a pretty-boy author (singer-actor Jing Boran 井柏然), he’s whisked back to Republican China of the 1930s where he tries to retrospectively fix his mother’s genes by getting his maternal grandfather (Ou Hansheng 欧汉声) to date a pretty college student (Ma Su 马苏) rather than a fat fellow professor (Hu Shanshan 胡珊珊). This section is the longest of the lot and the least funny, with a Russian Roulette sequence involving a crimelord (cross-talk veteran Yu Qian 于谦) that isn’t helped by Guo’s sluggish direction and staging. Thereafter, the film moves progressively back in time, satirising Qing dramas, Ming martial-arts movies, Jin imperial dramas and finally mythical VFX fantasies. The best, and tightest, are the Qing and Ming sections.

Though the film’s humour is more gentle than laugh-out-loud, the basic idea is just about kept alive by the 30-odd cameos (including Guo and actress Fan Bingbing 范冰冰 in the final scene); but there’s no real development of the central idea beyond the message of looks aren’t everything. What’s left are individual performances – Zhang Guoli 张国立 as the hero’s off-hand father, Wang Baoqiang 王宝强 and Da Peng 大鹏 doing 1930s gangster schtick, action star Wu Jing 吴京 sending up swordsman heroes, Wu Xiubo 吴秀波 classy as a mild-mannered Jin-dynasty doctor – plus the usual in-jokes you’d find in any CNY movie. Notably, the film is an almost 100% Mainland affair, apart from Taiwan actress/model Lin Zhiling 林志玲, who pops up briefly at the start and finish as the hero’s putative girlfriend, young Taiwan comedienne Xie Yilin 谢依霖 as the doctor’s wife, and veteran Hong Kong comedienne Wu Junru 吴君如 [Sandra Ng], who has a rather dull cameo in the mythological section. Technical credits are okay but nothing special, and the score by prolific Chinese American composer Wang Zongxian 王宗贤 [Nathan Wang] is almost continuous to keep things as lively as possible.

Whatever the gobbledygook English title means is anyone’s guess. The film’s title literally means “Ancestors to the 19th Generation”, which is a play on a popular expletive that involves cursing someone’s ancestors to the 18th generation. Also, the names of the hero’s relatives are all puns: Mei Banfa sounds exactly like the phrase “No Way”, Mei Xiwang like “No Hope”, Mei Qiantu like “No Prospects” and so on.

CREDITS

Presented by Beijing A Film (CN), Beijing Deyunshe Cultural Diffusion (CN), Huace Pictures (CN). Produced by Beijing A Film (CN).

Script: Guo Degang, Chen Biyu. Script planning: Wang Taili, Su Liang. Photography: Chen Dan. Editing: Zhu Liyun. Music: Wang Zongxian [Nathan Wang]. Art direction: Li Dapeng. Styling: Qiu Zhijuan, Liu Shuxia. Sound: Li Ying, Zhang Jingyu. Action: Guo Haoxian. Executive direction: Fan Zhigang.

Cast: Yue Yunpeng (Bei Xiaobei), Lin Zhiling (Liya), Wu Xiubo (Mei Qiantu), Wu Jing (Mei Banfa), Wang Baoqiang (Feng Jiuye’s assistant), Da Peng [Dong Chengpeng] (Xiaozhuge, Feng Jiuye’s driver), Wu Junru [Sandra Ng] (Nv Wa, goddess), Ou Hansheng (Mei Xingfu, Bei Xiaobei’s maternal grandfather), Du Chun (Mei Xiwang, Bei Xiaobei’s great-grandfather), Ma Su (Lili, university student), Zhang Li (Huang Zi’an), Zhang Guoli (Bei Xiaobei’s father), Yu Qian (Feng Jiuye), Guo Qilin (Wang Baobao, swordsman), Jing Boran (Lei), Li Chen (Zhang Baishun, doctor), Zheng Kai (Lei’s manager), Jia Nailiang (Wang Xiao’er, Tong family’s martial-arts instructor), Wang Dongcheng (Zhu Rong, god), Xiao Jingteng (Gong Gong), Huang Lei (book publisher), Wu Yue (Kua Fu, god), Sun Yizhou (book-signing MC), Wang Xiaoli (Shen Nong, god), Meng Fei (bumped-into man), Sun Yue (emperor regent), Xie Nan (female reporter), Xie Yilin (Mei Qiantu’s wife), Zhang Chenguang (Zi’an’s father), Liu Bei (Tong Tiechui/Copper Hammer), Jia Ling (hotpot woman), Fan Bingbing (Bei Xiaobei’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother), Guo Degang (her husband), Hu Shanshan (Wang Gangtie, Mei Xingfu’s fiancee), Hou Zhen (teahouse owner), Zhang Helun, Li Hebiao, Lang Heyan, Yan Hexiang (four police constables), Hu Wenshan (Zhenzhen), Chen Xinru (Aiai), Chen Jing (Lianlian).

Release: China, 16 Feb 2018.