| Jungle Juice (2002) is a urban comedy from Korea. The film follows Ki-tea (Hyuk Jang- Volcano High) and Chul-soo (Beom-su Lee), two young guys in their early twenties just trying to get by any way they can on the ragtag streets. They happen into a job with a gang, eeking it out in the lower ranks where an underlings failure to deliver an amusing joke gets him a hard slap to the eye. When the two fail to back up the main gang members during a debt collection, they are told they have to pay up the lost $20,000 dollars in three days.
With the help of their friend (a hooker named Meg Ryan), they ponder various ways to earn the money back. This includes everything from prostituting themselves to selling their organs. After getting hopped up on a homemade drug cocktail, they are arrested while trying to make off with an ATM machine. The cops wire them up so they can hopefully dig up dirt on the gang. That ends up just being the start of their troubles, which eventually leads them to making off with a load of dope and having the cops and more gangsters on their tail.
Okay, here is my big problem- I just didn't like these guys. In the best case scenario, the film makers were hoping for their lead characters to be loveable losers, just a pair of luckless, crass guys who get in over their heads. But, they ain't exactly Abbot & Costello or Cheech and Chong. I'll venture to say I found the Menendez brothers to be a more endearing duo.
Whereas the druggie scammers in Trainspotting were likable losers due to sharp characterizations and the stylized tone of the film, the guys in Jungle Juice are bumbling wannabe criminals, who we aren't given any reason to like, lost in a film that steadily veers from goofball to grisly. Even in a moralising way, in Trainspotting the drugs are a cause of all of the characters problems, wheras in Jungle Juice it is just a device for more shenannigans. A stupid duo like Jay and Silent Bob, for instance, are likeable because no matter how they might try, they are hard-wired to be clueless and crude. You get the feeling Ki-Tea and Chul-Soo should know better and their appeal (for me) was zero. In the end, I found myself searching for some incentive to like the guys more than I was paying attention to any gags and laughable moments or giving a flip about thier outcome. I cannot say that I would have cared much if the film suddenly ended with the two getting bullets to the brain.
Conclusion: Well, it didn't really win me over. To be fair, comedy is such a subjective thing and maybe Jungle Juice just wasn't to my taste. It didn't have me switching off the player or groaning, so I can see how others (who for whatever reason actually like the main characters) may find it amusing... |
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