Sooner or later, it had to happen. Johnnie To has been producing and directing so many solid films, that he finally came out with a terrible mess. To's latest movie "Wu Yen" is the most painfully unfunny comedy to come out this year. It has the look, feel, and cheap production values of bad Hong Kong television. The shiny and glaring video sheen on this picture is inexcusable. If To and co-producer Wai Ka-Fai were aiming to imitate bad TV, then they succeeded. If they were looking to put out a quality piece of work, then they failed miserably. The script was amazingly bad. There was no subtlety or humor at all.

The three leading women in the film were miscast, or perhaps they made the wrong choices in their methods of delivering the comedy. Comedy is a matter of timing, and this movie had none. Mui, Cheng and Cheung were terrible. Speaking your lines quickly is not comedy. After awhile, the three women sounded very shrill, like whiners. They needed to be bigger, grander and more fantastic. What was missing were the good old reaction shots of the characters as they went through their situations as wide-eyed, slack-jawed, or mouth agape zingers. With a director like To, you'd expect a more finished product.

The movie's conceit is that a shadow puppet play is transformed from puppets to live actors in the telling of the story. When dealing with cartoon caricatures, the cast didn't go far enough. There was no distinction between the stereotypical good and bad characters. This is a film where the casting should have been based on types that define the fable. Someone in this movie had to play the straight man, or the target of the "jokes," but there wasn't one. This film needed an Ng Man-Tat type or similar straight man role. This movie made me yearn for the comedy of Stephen Chow or Wong Jing, at least for a few sight gags and some lowbrow humor. "Wu Yen" had some tasteless humor, but not funny in any way. Not to mention that this film was awfully long.

I felt like abandoning this stinker, but I waited until the end, thinking that maybe the film would get better as it went on. I was sorely disappointed by To and this shabby production. I can only hope that this was an aberration in To's filmmaking.