Water Boys
五个扑水的少年
China, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 110 mins.
Director: Song Haolin 宋灏霖.
Rating: 7/10.
Very free re-make of the 2001 Japanese hit comedy about a male synchro swiming team is actually much better constructed and with more interesting characters.
STORY
A city somewhere in China, the present day. Due to a misunderstanding, Shaohai Third High School’s over-enthusiastic sports trainer Kui (Yi Yunhe) puts together the first-ever men’s synchronised swimming team, composed of five misfits – the very average Zhang Wei (Xin Yunlai) who’s never excelled in anything, his crazy best friend Qu Xiaodong (Wang Chuan), dorky transfer student from the northeast Wang Zi (Wu Junting), quiet and studious Chen Minghan (Feng Xiangkun) and cool, laconic Gao Fei (Li Xiaoqian), a top sports student. On a whim, Kui appoints Zhang Wei team captain. In fact it’s only in the bus to the training centre that the five are told that they are to be a _men’s_ synchronised swimming team. “If girls can learn boxing, why can’t boys learn synchronised swimming?” says Kui. However, when Kui injures himself and is taken to hospital, he tells Zhang Wei to take over as temporary trainer. Zhang Wei has no idea what to do, and the other four don’t have their hearts in the project anyway. When the school’s swimming team tries to take over their slot at the pool, it’s Gao Fei who takes the initiative, challenging the team’s captain (Wu Yixun) to a swiming race, winning, and thereby keeping their slot. The five are then told by the school’s headmaster (Jiang Yongbo) that they have two months to prepare for an exhibition match at the High School Water Sports Meeting, and he wants to see them in a warm-up match in a month’s time. Zhang Wei manages to find a trainer, Yuan Yulai (Xin Baiqing), but he turns out to be a dolphin trainer at a rundown Ocean World. Yuan Yulai offers them a deal: he will train the five if they agree to repaint and clean the place up. Yuan Yulai keeps delaying his part of the bargain but eventually starts training them. Zhang Wei turns out to be the weakest member of the team, which then starts arguing amongst itself. But just when he pulls himself together, the school discovers that Yuan Yulai was never a synchronised swimming trainer and disbands the team. Everything now depends on Zhang Wei proving he can be a leader.
REVIEW
A very free re-make of the Japanese hit comedy Waterboys ウォーターボーイズ (2001), about a male synchronised swimming team, Water Boys 五个扑水的少年 is actually much better constructed and has more interesting characters to draw the viewer into the highly fanciful story. After the likeable but slim primary-school story Mr. Zhu’s Summer 猪太狼的夏天 (2017) and the costume-fantasy buddy movie Soul Snatcher 赤狐书生 (2020), a Hong Kong coproduction, Boys was the third theatrical feature by Shandong-born actor-turned-director Song Haolin 宋灏霖, then 43. Though strong visually, his previous features had been weakened by thinly developed screenplays. Water Boys reversed that trend, almost certainly due to the return as a writer of Miao Qian 缪倩, who co-authored his striking online feature Fatal Love 所爱非人 (2016); she has since remained with him on subsequent movies. The Japanese Waterboys was released in Hong Kong but not in the Mainland; maybe because 20 years was too long to wait for a remake, or maybe because the principal cast were almost all unknowns, it grossed only a meh RMB63 million as a National Day release in the middle of Covid.
The original film (see poster, left) was written and directed by Yaguchi Shinobu 矢口史靖, who went on to make Swing Girls スウィングガールズ (2004), about a group of high-schoolers who try to form a jazz band. Waterboys was a good-looking but unfocused picture, mainly riding on its cheeky central idea of a group of high-school boys forming a synchro swimming team. Like Yaguchi, Song manages to bring this off without a hint of camp; but he and Miao also come up with a much tidier plot that remains centred on the five boys, all of whom are less than enthused with the idea at the start despite their trainer’s admonition that “if girls can learn boxing, why can’t boys learn synchronised swimming?” The central idea, plus the fact that for a while the boys become entangled with a dolphin trainer, is almost all that the two films share in common.
As the film makes abundantly clear, Water Boys is more about self-determination than men having a go at a traditionally female sport. “We are only defined by ourselves” 我们只被自己定义 screams a title at the end, underlining the fact that the whole story is told through the character of Zhang Wei, a self-described “very average” teenager who’s never excelled in anything. His decision, around the hour mark, that he actually wants to win at something for the first time in his life triggers the film’s third act and a transformational montage sequence-with-song. The underlying theme is not so different from that of Mr. Zhu’s Summer, in which a shy primary school teacher finally manned up; in Water Boys it leads to an effective, if scarcely believable, finale that’s both uplifting and moving on its own level.
As Zhang Wei, boybander-actor Xin Yunlai 辛云来, generally a bland presence (Cry Me a Sad River 悲伤逆流成河, 2018; Stay with Me 我是真的讨厌异地恋, 2022), is well cast and, as in My Blue Summer 暗恋 橘生淮南(2022), develops some colour later on. The other four lead roles are played by lesser-known actors but far more strongly in order to maintain audience interest – especially Li Xiaoqian 李孝谦 as the enigmatic but sportiest member of the team. As the hippy-ish dolphin trainer, Xin Baiqing 辛柏青 is the film’s strongest drawn character, despite being on-screen for relatively little time. Better known Dai Lele 代乐乐 and Lin Peng 林鹏 pop up here and there as Zhang Wei’s mother and father. The script half-heartedly constructs a romantic subplot between Zhang Wei and one of his team’s elder sister (blankly played by newcomer Miao Jijun 缪纪君) but it goes nowhere.
Precise camerawork (by d.p. Li Ran 李然, So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春, 2013; The Ark of Mr. Chow 少年班, 2015; Hide and Seek 捉迷藏, 2016) and scoring (Wu Tao 吴涛, Mr. Zhu’s Summer) ensure a smoothly assembled package. The film’s Chinese title (literally, “Five Youths Splashing Around in the Water”) is the same as that for the Japanese original’s release in Hong Kong.
CREDITS
Presented by Beijing Enlight Pictures (CN), Colorful Enlight (Yangzhou) Pictures (CN).
Script: Miao Qian, Song Haolin. Original script: Yaguchi Shinobu. Photography: Li Ran. Editing: Yu Hongchao. Music: Wu Tao, Hu Botao. Art direction: Liu Jing. Styling: Liu Jing. Sound: Wang Danning, Du Duzhi, Du Zegang. Action: Xue Feiwei. Visual effects: Jiang Chao, Huang Canzhou, He Xuesong (Beijing Kernel Film). Executive direction: He Peilin.
Cast: Xin Yunlai (Zhang Wei), Feng Xiangkun (Chen Minghan), Li Xiaoqian (Gao Fei), Wu Junting (Wang Zi), Wang Chuan (Qu Xiaodong), Xin Baiqing (Yuan Yulai), Dai Lele (Zhang Wei’s mother), Lin Peng (Zhang Wei’s father), Yu Zhaohe (Maomao, online influencer at hospital), Miao Jijun (Chen Mingyu, Chen Minghan’s elder sister), Yi Yunhe (Kui, trainer), Chang Haibo (Xia, teacher), Li Daguang (school director), Jiang Yongbo (headmaster), Wang Qing (Qu Xiaodong’s mother), Han Qiuchi (Da Hu), Wu Yixun (swimming-team captain), Kouzi (Kouzi, member of swimming team), Zhou Yunfeng (Xiaochong, member of swimming team), Liu Dechang (swimming-team trainer), Li Tianchi (Maomao’s female partner), Wang Zhuo (trampoline trainer).
Release: China, 1 Oct 2021.