Himalaya Singh

Year:2005
Director:Wai Ka-Fai
Cast:Lau Ching-Wan, Ronald Cheng Chung-Kei, Cecilia Cheung Pak-Chi, Francis Ng Chun-Yu, Cherrie Ying Choi-Yi, Wong Yau-Nam, Tsui Tin-Yau, Shing Fui-On, Lee Siu-Kei, Tommy Wong Kwong-Leung, Sanatan Mody, Gauri S. Kamik, Donald Tong Kim-Hong, Siu Yeah-Jim
Description:
If
you think your cinema tolerance is unusually high,
then Himalaya Singh is for you. A hodgepodge
of movie parodies, vaguely meaningful Hindu mythology,
and over-the-top everything else, this Lunar New Year
film echoes last year's Fantasia in that it
takes a cast of pretty big stars, has them act silly,
and supposes that it all means something. Both films
are completely weightless, and both feature a pronounced
manic tone that could leave you exhausted. However,
Himalaya Singh is much worse than Fantasia
- which is mystifying because really, the two films
are quite alike. Where did writer-director-producer-scapegoat
Wai Ka-Fai go wrong?
Ronald Cheng leads the
cast as Himalaya Singh, a sheltered dope born in the
Himalayas. Singh has attained the highest stage of
Yoga, and is sent out into the world by his parents
. His supposed mission
is to marry the cloyingly-named India Beauty , but Singh falls in with a Chinese beauty
instead: Tally , an undesirable wannabe
bride who thinks Singh should be hers. Too bad he's
promised to India Beauty, a fact that sends her into
a maniacal tizzy. Her plan: to turn Singh into a bastard
who will mistreat India Beauty, thereby exacting revenge
on the girl who gets the guys instead of her. Singh
goes along because his dad told him to try being a
bad guy, with the caveat that Singh can take a memory
loss potion to erase the memory of his evil deeds.
Of course, Papa Singh doesn't seem to care about collateral
damage, i.e. all the people affected by his son's
possible misdeeds; he just supports being a bad guy
because it's good experience. That's parenting for
you.
Meanwhile, Lau Ching-Wan
is an unlucky Hong Kong bloke on tour in India with
his two nephews . The nephews get sidetracked when they fall
in with Francis Ng, a fellow traveler whose adventurous
spirit causes all three to drink the same memory loss
potion mentioned above. The result: they can't remember
who the hell they are, and embark on a series of meaningless
adventures punctuated by Francis Ng overacting. Thanks
to the memory loss potion, Ng gets to pull the occasional
Memento joke, plus he gets the opportunity
to take on various personalities, including a Japanese
Yakuza, an Indian expatriate, and finally Himalaya
Singh himself. Ng's performance is actually fairly
decent, and he, Ronald Cheng, and even Cherrie Ying
manage amusing and effective performances. Just because
they're acting inane and insane doesn't mean we should
necessarily knock their effort.
However, all amusement
is thrown out the window with the arrival of Lau Ching-Wan's
character, a thinly-veiled knockoff of Mr. Bean. What
that means is Lau mugs, mugs, and mugs some more in
the service of a character that's mostly clueless
and all annoying. After getting separated from his
nephews, he ends up falling into a hallucinatory love
affair with Peacock , an ethereal
beauty whose entire shtick is to parody as many movies
as possible. Somewhere in Time, Titanic,
Kill Bill, Indiana Jones, and more get
skewered, though none of the jokes are really anything
more than curious distractions. Lau does a reasonable
job as the Mr. Bean clone, but there's one big problem:
this is Lau Ching-Wan, who shouldn't be wasting his
time with Rowan Atkinson's leftovers. Still, Lau gets
two love interests; besides Peacock, he also romances
India Beauty, which leads to his inclusion in a massive
yoga competition to win India Beauty's hand in marriage.
Cue a massive yoga race, featuring CGI that's reputedly
state-of-art, but really doesn't look like it. Apparently,
somebody bought their computer graphics workstations
at Walmart.
The above might sound
amusing to some...though if you're one of those people,
you should make an appointment at your local mental
health practitioner pronto. Then again, Fantasia
didn't sound that amusing either: three private-eye
brothers encounter weirdness with a genie dressed
up like Harry Potter, a couple of beehive-hairdoed
juvenile delinquents, and finally a CGI monster that
was more silly than scary-looking. The big difference:
Fantasia was based on the beloved Hong Kong
cinema of the sixties and seventies, and even the
CGI monster had a basis in past HK lore . The stars of Fantasia were playing
the Hui brothers, Josephine Siao, and Shek Kin, and
even the pseudo-hopeful message at the end of Fantasia
had local grounding. It's no wonder that Fantasia
struck a chord with local audiences because it was
really about Hong Kong.
Conversely, Himalaya
Singh isn't about Hong Kong, and it's definitely
not about India. Instead, it's a completely random
hodgepodge of jokes with no rhyme or reason, and after
a good ninety minutes of such pointless silliness,
a person could become insane if not agitated and downright
murderous. Movie parodies are sometimes cool, but
the ones here are thrown upon the audience with all
the cloying referential lameness of a Wong Jing production.
The lone exception to this: the large parody of Somewhere
in Time, which is notable because it's not a very
recent movie , and has no long-term
cultural significance. Those who saw the film might
find the parody to be worth a few giggles, but it's
still nothing worth writing home about. In fact, nothing
here is that interesting or affecting at all, which
makes the final message of Himalaya Singh
completely useless. When the "Go humanity!"
ending rolls around, Wai Ka-Fai seems to either be
A) kidding himself, or B) rubbing our faces in it.
You decide.
Overall, Himalaya Singh
is a decent curiosity for HK Cinema completists, and
really, it's not as bad as Where's Mama's Boy
or The Spy Dad. It's just tiresome and annoying,
and does nothing to make its continuous sensory assault
worthwhile. Fans of some of the stars might be okay
, and the locations and costumes are
pleasing to look at. At the very least, Himalaya
Singh actually seems to improve as the film goes
on, but that's a relative measure. Considering the
first 30 minutes are interminable, a slight improvement
for the remainder of the running time is like dislocating
your finger after breaking a limb. Basically, it's
not so bad in comparison, but it still sucks. To add
insult to injury, Himalaya Singh is currently
2005's highest-grossing Hong Kong film ! The terrible sadness of this cannot
be properly expressed.