My Kung-Fu Sweetheart

Year:2006
Director:Wong Jing
Cast:Cecilia Cheung Pak-Chi, Leo Koo Kui-Kei, Yuen Qiu, Yuen Wah, Sammy, Wong Yat-Fei, Qian Jiayin, Ma Shuchao, Shi Lan, Lin Xue, Wong Jing, Hui Siu-Hung, Lam Suet, Samuel Pang King-Chi, Yuen King-Tan
Description:
Wong
Jing returns - in more ways than one - for My Kung-Fu
Sweetheart, a completely useless and totally unnecessary
action-comedy that delivers Wong Jing goodness with
every second of its too-long 90 minute running time.
Crappy dialogue? Check. Unnecessary movie parodies?
Check. Nonexistent characters? Check. Ripped off jokes?
Check. A man in a giant condor suit? Um...check. If
you like your movies senseless and completely unoriginal,
then My Kung-Fu Sweetheart delivers. It also
assaults, annoys, and sometimes even amuses. We're
not totally uncharitable over here.
Ubiquitous Cecilia Cheung
stars as Phoenix, a kung-fu princess with awesome
bone structure and impressive lineage. Her parents
belong to the "Secret
Society of Kung Fu Masters", who hide their true
identities while ferreting out evil martial artists
who roam contemporary China. After learning her parents
are martial arts superheroes, Phoenix gets the go-ahead
to train in the misty mountains, where she learns
of her all-important romantic destiny: to fall in
love with a man who sees her when she isn't supposed
to be seen. Flash-forward to the present and the now-adult
Phoenix is an office lady who primarily uses her powers
to prevent work tardiness. One morning, while scaling
the building, she's seen by rich kid Dragon ,
who, duh, sees her when she isn't supposed to be seen.
It's love...or at least, she wants it to be.
Unfortunately, Dragon
has problems. Namely, he's a dope, plus people are
trying to kill him. While attending a business party,
Dragon witnesses the massacre of everyone present
by the minions of the evil White Eyebrows .
As the sole survivor, he's naturally next to get offed,
but Phoenix wants to protect him. To do so, she'll
need the help of her now-estranged parents, plus her
pet condor, who's played by a guy in a fake suit that
resembles the San Diego Chicken. She'll need all the
help she can get; White Eyebrows is actually the most
sought-after evil martial artist around, and learned
the "Classic of the 9 Negatives", meaning
he's supposed to be nigh-unbeatable. Luckily, there's
some invincible stance that can only be performed
by a family of two loving couples. Can the two couples
get together in time to stop White Eyebrows from,
uh, being evil?
Not surprisingly, the
answer is yes, though if you expected anything else
then you're definitely in the wrong theater. My
Kung-Fu Sweetheart is standard Wong Jing stuff,
meaning it borrows liberally from a trillion other
sources without actually giving back, and possesses
next to no drama. Though there are secret alliances
and martial arts rivalries at stake, Wong Jing's script
is lackluster and boring, and his staging as exciting
as landfill. Dramatic exposition is usually dispensed
in morosely-acted long takes, and the romantic scenes
are dry and snore-inducing. The action itself isn't
too bad, though the CGI is crappy, and Wong cheapens
everything with an overreliance on contrived strobe
lighting. The acting is uninteresting too. Leo Koo
is bland, while Cecilia Cheung gains points for simply
being professional. Yuen Wah and Yuen Qiu manage to
act like their pairing still contains some novelty,
while last year's most annoying actor, Sammy, looks
to take home the crown again. Even Kung Fu Mahjong
possesses more inspired performances, though My
Kung-Fu Sweetheart is an acting clinic compared
to Kung Fu Mahjong 2.
Still, acting is unimportant
here, as are drama, real emotion, or any semblance
of creativity. This is a Wong Jing movie, and the
man does here what he does best: deliver a crappy
cinema experience with sometimes amusing and even
infectious glee. My Kung-Fu Sweetheart may
be an out-and-out stinker, but it seems to make no
bones about it - and with the quality issue tabled,
some fun stuff does rise to the surface. The most
amusing stuff: the parodies of martial arts literature
and iconography, which begin with some punny names
and end with the crappy-looking
condor. An obvious nod to Jin Yong's Return of
the Condor Heroes ,
the condor is so cheesy and bad looking that it probably
wouldn't even qualify for a Roger Corman picture.
And when Cecilia Cheung scolds the man in the bird
suit with a curt, English-spoken "bad bird",
that could be worth a good 15% of your ticket price.
It's not worth your full 8 bucks, but not much from
Wong Jing is.
A couple other high
points: a brief parody of Johnnie To's The
Mission, and the revelation that the world's greatest
martial arts scroll has been lost because - get this
- it was written in English! Wong Jing even shows
up in another supporting role, and the guy actually
manages to be funny. The director plays Itchiban,
a martial arts master skilled in invulnerability,
who works at a zoo and beats up the crocodiles at
any given chance. Oddly, Wong may be a better actor
than a director, though that compliment has less to
do with his thespian skills than the fact that he
churns out lousy movies. Wong's filmmaking credo seems
to be "anything goes, and it usually sucks";
the man makes bad cinema, and given the way that his
films are put together, it's plainly obvious that
he knows it too. By appearing in his own crappy movies,
Wong Jing is basically saying that even he can't make
things any worse - and he doesn't. If bad movies are
the given goal, then My Kung-Fu Sweetheart
is a success. God help us. .