| After two animated features and one short for the 1:99 collection, Brian Tse's and Alice Mak's comic book pig SORT OF took a leap into live action. For the Lunar New Year of 2006, Samson Chiu (Golden Chicken, When I Fall In Love... With Both) helmed the blend of the simplistic 2D/extravagant 3D and live segments featuring the Hong Kong movie entertainment elite. The end result again scripted by Brian Tse rings true to the wonderful, honest and intelligent questions hovering in little McDull's head as he tries to conjure up thoughts of how to be a pillar in society (owning no pants but only swim trunks, he sets his sights on being a lifeguard or an office lady). Whenever blending in live action however, the often puzzling, weird, off-beat yet oddly accessible nature to the animation gets muddled in a barrage of attempts at possibly in-jokey, puzzling, weird, off-beat cameo-heavy skits. It's a stream of random consciousness in the eyes of this viewer and perhaps requires a Hong Kong mind but various episodes of Ronald Cheng as a braindead marketing head stuck in the legs of Cheung Siu-Fai's marketing head, Christopher Doyle teaching his new butcher's apprentice the ropes, Anthony Wong (who returns to do voice work again naturally) as a sea captain stranded with hungry passengers, and the centre piece hostage situation led by the members of Alive (Daniel Wu, Terence Yin, Andrew Lin and Convoy Chan) is dumb silliness not transcending that tag. The animated touches are McDull-lite but still fairly top notch stuff that just tells us how good of a puzzling, philosophical time we've had with the two features previously. The long cast list includes the likes of Sandra Ng (also a returning voice cast member), Kelly Chan, Gigi Leung, Eric Tsang, Josie Ho, Shawn Yue, Jaycee Chan, Jan Lam, Francis Ng, Nicholas Tse, Miu Kiu-Wai, Cheung Tat-Ming, Alex Fong, Jim Chim (in a patented oddball performance), Wayne Lai and John Shum. |
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