Contract Lover

Year:2007


Richie Ren and Fan Bing-Bing
Director:Alfred Cheung Kin-Ting
Cast:Richie Ren, Fan Bing-Bing, Kate Tsui Tsz-Shan, Yuen Wah, Ian Powers, Liu Yi, Liu Yi-Wei, Alfred Cheung Kin-Ting
Description:
Everything old is new
again with Contract Lover, a messy, formulaic,
and ultimately tolerable comedy from veteran director
Alfred Cheung. Richie Ren stars as Fat, an investment
banker in Beijing with an exceptionally progressive
girlfriend. Kate Tsui is his girlfriend Rachael, who's
headstrong, career-minded, and not averse to casual
sex or *gasp* pole dancing as a form of recreation.
Fat wants to marry her, but he's afraid that his conservative
pop, Master Fok , will say no. How will
Fat convince his parents to let him marry Rachael?
The answer: cheat. Fat
and Rachael scheme to fool Master Fok by employing
a fake girlfriend as a decoy, letting her draw all
the parental ire so that Rachael can swoop in and
win by default. Their choice for a decoy is the unemployed
Joe , a gorgeous gal who only looks
frumpy because the filmmakers dress her in glasses
and loose, unflattering sweaters. At first Joe appears
to out of contention for fake girlfriend duty, but
before long she's involved in a training montage,
complete with beauty sessions and pole dancing lessons,
the goal being to become even more progressive and
forceful than Rachael, such that Rachael will appear
quite tame by comparison.
Does the plan work?
Honestly, who cares? We could pretend that there's
a plot or story to be concerned with in Contract
Lover, but we'd be kidding ourselves. Unsurprisingly,
actual narrative suspense is not on offer here. This
is a throwback comedy in that it makes no attempt
at cleverness and seems hastily slapped together with
only the requisite plot devices and barest of situations
from which to wring hopeful comedy gold. Alfred Cheung
does wring some amusement from his flimsy premise,
but the hit-to-miss comedy ratio is probably 1:4,
if not something worse. Really, this is tired, unoriginal
stuff that requires the help of its cast and some
audience goodwill to bring it above a low C grade.
That's the big question here: can Alfred Cheung pull
this patchwork film together such that audiences will
feel a bit more charitable towards its unnecessary
existence?
Well, Cheung partially
succeeds, though the target was already low to begin
with. Contract Lover is an average, low budget
Chinese comedy, meaning it's crass, sloppy, and only
occasionally funny. There's some decent situation
stuff here, mostly involving Jo's attempts at shocking
the locals with her progressive western ways. What
this means is we get such questionably funny sights
as the locals trying out pole dancing, or Fat's mom
attempting to seduce Master Fok with some new lingerie.
Joe's attempts at chicanery are largely unsuccessful,
partly because Fan Bing-Bing doesn't convince as a
selfish viper, but mostly because all the characters
in the film are much nicer than advertised. Fat's
mom is actually quite progressive, and Master Fok
forgives Joe so many times that it's obvious that
Fat's plan will never work. Basically, everything
is manipulated such that the film's premise can be
stretched out to over ninety minutes. The filmmakers
achieve that goal, but the stretch marks do show.
Where the film does really
pick up is with its unintentional humor, which elicits
plenty of laughs or groans, depending on your tolerance
and/or charity towards cheap Chinese comedy. One large
joke involves Master Fok's rivalry with another martial
arts school. You see, Fok is a descendant of Fok Yuen-Gap
, and
is due to have a big tournament with the descendants
of Wong Fei-Hung. Six degrees of Jet Li aside, what's
funny here is that Fok's main fighter gets injured
and the replacement is Alex , Joe's best
buddy and the most amusing gay martial artist ever.
Alex causes minor strife when he charms Fat's sister,
which sends Fok's main martial arts fighter into a
jealous rage. That means we get a perfunctory fight
sequence that culminates in a hilariously bizarre
homoerotic embrace. Powers overdoes his cartoonish
role, but his gusto actually makes the film slightly
more enjoyable. It's not quality stuff, but at least
there are laughs on offer.
Does it save the whole
film? Hardly. Stuff like Contract Lover is
difficult to even evaluate because it's so ill-conceived
and crass that one should basically knock the very
institution that spawned it: quickie commercial cinema
where quality was never intended at all. Mainland
audiences - who are the target for this trifle - will
likely find this to be a suitably lame time killer,
so who are we to tell them that they're wrong? Fans
of Fan Bing-Bing and Richie Ren will probably be charmed
by the fact that the actors are game for these silly
shenanigans, and will also forgive that the attempts
at actual emotion are so flaccid that the filmmakers
resort to a climactic flashback montage to remind
audiences that the two characters may have shared
a moment of connection sometime in the previous ninety
minutes. Honestly, I didn't buy it, and most audiences
probably won't either. Then again, the hope of quality
is not why anyone would see Contract Lover.
Keep that in mind when you tune in, and who knows,
you might still be amused. However, it could be for
entirely the wrong reasons.