Wu Yen (2001)
Reviewed by: Paul Fonoroff on 2001-02-03
Wu Yen would be a Cantonese movie fan’s dream come true—if casting and marketing were everything. Director-producer Johnny To is a master at both. His Needing You, one of the most popular films of 2000, turned pop star Sammi Cheng into a box office force. In Wu Yen he teams her with Anita Mui, one of the few female personalities of the 1980s to still retain a popular following in the new century, and 20-year-old Cecelia Cheung, number one in the up-and-coming category (some would say she has already arrived).

Alas, casting isn’t everything, and Wu Yen is a case of a good cast cast adrift. The classic comedy of a clever-but-ugly lady (Wu Yen), whose destiny to marry the buffoonish emperor is stymied by an alluring fox, is familiar to Hong Kong viewers, having been brought to the big and small screen numerous times since Cantonese pictures learned to talk. Alas, the filmmakers make only the most perfunctory attempt on playing with this familiarity. There is a limp effort at spoofing the unique low-tech special effects and sound effects in those “late show” oldies, but it never goes far enough to be truly amusing. Wu Yen’s production values are not particularly high, but it seems due to a hasty production schedule rather than any conscious effort to emulate or burlesque an earlier cinematic age.

The movie plays with a few gimmicks—Anita in a man’s role and the attractive Sammi as the less-than-pretty title character. But the gimmicks quickly grow stale, while the film goes on and on and on for a laborious 120 minutes. There are a few funny scenes. At the screening I attended, the crowd laughed loudest during an over-the-top mah-jongg game, the kind of sequence that is almost de rigeur in Chinese New Year comedies. The hilarity doesn’t go beyond that level, and even moments like those are few and far between.

There is virtually non-stop gab, little of it clever, with Anita’s pseudo-macho delivery, Sammi’s nasal protestations, and Cecelia’s coquetry becoming shrill. The latter looks ravishing in her ancient costumes, but still lacks the sense of comic timing previous films have shown the two more veteran actresses to possess. Fans satiated with New Years goodies will probably be too gorged to notice. For them, and they are indeed the target audience, Wu Yen will provide innocuous, inoffensive family fun.

2 Stars

This review is copyright (c) 2001 by Paul Fonoroff. All rights reserved. No part of the review may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Reviewer Score: 4