| In the nearly seven years and over 660 movies I have reviewed for this site, Where is Mama's Boy? is by far the worst film I have seen to date. It's only the second time I have given out a zero rating, and believe me this "movie" (I use that word loosely for this type of junk) deserves it. On a site that also features reviews for such crud as Ninja: The Protector, Bruce Le's Greatest Revenge and Cannonball Run II, Where is Mama's Boy? stands head above shoulders over the rest of the chum floating in the cinematic wastelands and is the undisputed king of the crappy movies. Bravo, William Hung, bravo. You've started the yearly "Hong Kong cinema is dead" bandwagon, and it's still only February.
For those of you are fortunate enough not to know who the hell William Hung is and why he is the anti-Christ of HK movies, he's a guy who got famous in the States by singing really badly during an audition for the inane TV show American Idol. Even though he looks like he rode the short bus to school, Hung's been smart enough to fully milk out his fifteen minutes of fame with CDs and appearances on other TV shows. For reasons unfathomable to anyone with an ounce of logic in their brain, producers in Hong Kong reportedly offered Hung HK$1 million to appear in this production, which was the first released to theaters in 2005 and thankfully bombed. At least someone in Hong Kong has some sense -- but the fact that there were some people willing to pay to see this in a theatre is mind-boggling.
Where is Mama's Boy? is supposedly a musical/comedy. Trouble is that the comedy isn't any sort of funny and the musical numbers are akin to fingernails on a blackboard. The movie tries really hard to be a Stephen Chow-esque "nonsense" comedy, with lots of movie parodies and toliet humor. Yes, there's yet another "hilarious" take off of Kill Bill, which was pretty original in the five other HK films that used it last year. As for the music? Well, we get a horrific Chinese takeoff on the "She Bangs" song that made Hung the pathetic shell of a man he is today -- twice! And one of them is with a talking horse! Yes, a talking horse. Apparently, William can also talk to animals. I just kept wishing one of the dogs on the set would bite him in the testicles. Someone had to pay for this atrocity I was watching.
Nothing, and I mean, nothing is done well in Where is Mama's Boy?. The movie is edited horribly -- shots often failed to match up with each other. At the times when the VCD's craptacular subtitles would disappear into light-colored backgrounds, I was thankful that I could not truly know how banal the banter was on-screen. One has to wonder if anyone, from the director to the janitor, involved on this movie took it seriously. I really hope not, because if this is something that could pass for any sort of "legitimate" film-making these days in Hong Kong, then their film industry is truly in trouble. As a long-time fan, I'm willing to hold out hope -- but if I ever see William Hung in a movie again, I think we can all just give up and call it a day. |
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