Daily Fantasy
日常幻想指南
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 97 mins.
Director: Liang Dong 梁栋.
Rating: 4/10.
Ambling, pointless fantasy about a professional thief who suddenly has the ability to talk to things.
STORY
Binhai city, coastal northeast China, the present day. Professional thief Zhen (Wang Yanlin) is hired by crimelord Hei (Gao Jie), with whom he has had a long and not always smooth relationship, to steal a golden statuette of Monkey King Sun Wukong that’s worth RMB35 million. Afterwards, when on his way home from a meeting with Hei, Zhen helps a woman whose car is sliding down a slope. Suddenly he’s struck by lightning and remembers how, at Xiangyang primary school, he was set up by other kids for stealing the wallet of the headmaster (Zhang Xuefeng). Next day Zhen wakes up at home and starts having delusional fantasies, with weird people appearing and disappearing. He realises he can converse with the “human spirits” of inanimate objects, like his toilets (Luo Ji), his sofa (Da Bing) and his Volkswagen Beetle (Zeng Jiang), as well as animals like a local dog (Zhang Zidong). Even the stolen Monkey King statuette (Bao Bei’er) talks to him. Worried he’s going crazy, Zhen goes to Huichen Mental Illness Control Research Centre, where the chief doctor turns out to be Ma Zhengzhi (Zhang Xuefeng), his old headmaster. And a junior doctor at the centre turns out to be his primary-school sweetheart Wang Caomei (Jiao Junyan). On his way home, the engine of his car blows up. The statuette advises him to give up thieving and go straight. Meanwhile, a truck driver (Liu Di) arrives to tow the car away. As he does, a red mask lying on the road warms him about the robbery of a jewellery shop that’s about to take place. The thieves all end up caught, and Zhen tries to explain to Wu (Zhao Longhao), the chief detective, that he heard about the crime because he now has the ability to talk to inanimate objects. Wang Caomei collects Zhen from the police station, explaining that he’s a good man but just a little mentally disturbed. She wants to take on Zhen as her patient, in order to prove herself at the centre, but her colleagues don’t agree there’s anything wrong with him. To underline the fact that he’s now gone straight, and to Hei’s anger, Zhen returns the statuette to the private collector he stole it from, as well as a book he took from a Buddhist temple. Gradually his special ability decreases, and Wang Caomei takes credit for “curing” him. But she still doesn’t respond to his romantic advances. And then Hei resurfaces in Zhen’s life.
REVIEW
A professional thief suddenly discovers he can communicate with non-human things in Daily Fantasy 日常幻想指南, a disappointing second feature by Mainland musician-turned-film-maker Liang Dong 梁栋, 40, after his impressive debut with the lightly comic semi-fantasy The Door 完美有多美 (2017). That earlier film, in which an average man found the portal to an alternate universe in which his life seemed perfect, bent reality in a more “realistic” way; in Daily Fantasy, the central premise is too often an excuse for just visual effects and lame humour, with a central plot that hardly goes anywhere. Shot in mid-2019 in Liang’s hometown of Dalian, northeast China, it finally reached Mainland screens this autumn, taking almost the same amount as The Door, an underwhelming RMB25 million.
The basic idea bears some similarities to a 2014 manga of the same Chinese name by Bai Ding 白丁, in which inanimate objects are anthropomorphised, though there’s no officially acknowledged connection between the two works. After stealing a valuable gold statuette of Monkey King from a private collector, professional thief Zhen (Wang Yanlin 王彦霖, in his first film lead) is struck by lightning one night and is suddenly able to talk to his furniture and even the neighbourhood dog. Seeking help at a psychiatric clinic, he re-meets a girl he was crazy over at primary school (Jiao Junyan 焦俊艳), as well as that school’s headmaster (now a shrink). For reasons never quite explained, all of this results in him leaving crime and going straight.
Liang’s screenplay lacks the order and precision of that for The Door, and is especially poorly structured in its early stages. After ambling along for 80-or-so minutes in an unfunny way, and occasionally jollied along by a soundtrack song, the film has a sudden forced climax with a crimelord (Taiwan’s Gao Jie 高捷 [Jack Kao], clocking in with a strange hairdo) that gives the film a brief action finale. It’s all very whimsical and leaves absolutely no aftertaste. Wang (the wounded sniper in blockbuster Operation Red Sea 红海行动, 2018; the best friend in fantasy romance The End of Endless Love 如果声音不记得, 2020) is rather colourless and not up to sustaining such thin material, even across a tightly-edited 97 minutes. The lively and always interesting Jiao (the movie star in Hanson and the Beast 二代妖精之今生有幸, 2017; the daughter in crime puzzler Hunt Down 长安道, 2019) never quite seems to break through the scripted confines of her part, in which romance is kept firmly at bay. Names pop up briefly in cameos – Bao Bei’er 包贝尔 as the Monkey King statuette, Hong Kong veteran Zeng Jiang 曾江 [Kenneth Tsang] as the hero’s Volkswagen Beetle, presenter Luo Ji 罗辑 as, yes, two rather camp toilets – but it’s dressing on a undercooked cake.
Technically the production is fine, thanks to a slightly enhanced natural look by experienced d.p. Xie Zhengyu 谢征宇 (under his pseudonym Xie Xie 谢谢) and art director Zhang Xiaobing 张晓兵, both of whom worked on Liang’s previous movie. An explanatory intertitle at the end is presumably there for audiences who wondered what it was all about: “Fantasy is a kind of romantic ability. It can accompany loneliness and also manufacture miracles. May you, in your everyday lives and for all four seasons, have three square meals and someone to accompany you.” 幻想是一种浪漫的能力，他可以陪伴孤独，制造奇迹。愿你在每个平凡的日子里，每个四季三餐，都有人陪伴。The film’s Chinese title means “A Guide to Everyday Fantasies”.
CREDITS
Presented by V Sunshine Culture & Communication (CN), Alibaba Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Beijing V Sunshine Cultural Technology (CN), Dadi Century (Beijing) (CN), Beijing Lajin Film (CN). Produced by Shenyang V Shinebrothers Culture Media (CN).
Script: Liang Dong. Photography: Xie Xie [Xie Zhengyu]. Editing: Niu He. Music: Zhang Yilin. Art direction: Zhang Xiaobing. Costumes: Wang Hui. Styling: Fu Lei. Sound: Wu Jiang, Zhao Ying, Jiao Chuanglei. Action: Yang Chongyu. Visual effects: Li Gen, Shi Ye. Executive direction: Wang Feng.
Cast: Wang Yanlin (Zhen), Jiao Junyan (Wang Caomei/Strawberry), Zhang Xuefeng (Ma Zhengzhi/primary-school head), Zeng Jiang [Kenneth Tsang] (“Old Car”), Luo Ji (“Toilets”), Zhang Zidong (“Dog”/Maoniu/Yak), Min Jian (Adam, painter), Bao Bei’er (“Monkey King”), Liu Di (truck driver/robber), Lin Gengxin (Huaniu), Gao Jie [Jack Kao] (Hei), Zhao Longhao (Wu, police detective), Zhao Hengyu (Monkey King’s master), Da Bing (“Sofa”), Hu Ma’er (“Green Planet”), Yang Lei (Jiang, sister-in-law), Chen Xixu (Lang), Gu Tongzhi (“Yellow Umbrella”), Zhang Hongwei (Bao), Song Yu, Ni Nan (robbers), Wu Xuefei (silk-stockings beauty), Liu Mengmeng (female mental patient/nurse), Anita (“Refrigerator”), Zhang Danning (“Ma Zhengzhi’s Computer”), Wang Yunfan (“Vending Machine”), Yao Di (young Zhen), Liu Qiqi (young Wang Caomei), Zhao Yang (“Adam’s Phone”).
Release: China, 19 Sep 2021.