| Produced by Wong Kar-Wai (who also co-wrote Jeff Lau's Haunted Cop Shop) the good production values and cinematography makes this period comedy enjoyable to look at. Lau directed the prior Chinese Odyssey vehicles starring Stephen Chow and this 2002 edition has the feel of a Stephen Chow film. Many of the jokes are done in a similar way but I wouldn't want to call it a negative thing. It's all in the performers and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai provides many laughs as the leading man. It's basically all the scenes (whether serious or not) with him, Vicky Zhao and Faye Wong that makes the movie reach the enjoyable level. When focus is shifted away from that the content is not as fun nor interesting. A fairly sizable number of cast members are Mandarin speakers and are therefore dubbed on the Cantonese track, obviously so. That is especially noticeable in Vicky Zhao and Cheng Chen's case. In their scenes together I switched to the Mandarin track where we hear the original sync sound Mandarin dialogue. |
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