Chongqing Hot Pot: A Spicy Bank Heist

Hot Pot is generally considered comfort food, but not in the subterranean restaurant Liu Bo runs with his two school chums. Granted, they like it served spicy, a la proper Sichuan style in Chongqing, but apparently not the way “Four Eyes” simmers it up. Business is so bad, the three pals are desperate to sell-out. When they inadvertently borrow into a bank vault during an unlicensed expansion attempt, capers inevitably ensue in Yang Qing’s Chongqing Hot Pot (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Liu lives at home with his exasperated mother, his somewhat addled but still twinkling-eyed grandfather, and a mountain of gambling debts. Xu Dong is relentlessly hassled by his status-conscious wife, whereas Four Eyes is eager to try his luck in Beijing. Each could use some fast cash, but their cave-bound eatery is too small to attract a buyer. Hoping to fix that, they wind up poking their heads into the nearby bank’s vault, like Bugs Bunny.

As it just so happened, an old classmate now works at the soulless, cliquey bank. In fact, Yu Xiaohui once had a crush on Liu and vice versa, but her family relocated before either could act on their crushes. Fearing fines and citations, Liu and his pals conspire with Yu to sneak into the bank to fix the yet to be discovered hole. It is pretty safe to conclude these dudes are the decent sorts, since their big conspiracy revolves around structural repair work. However, things get drastically complicated when real gun-toting bank-robbers strike the bank at exactly the same time Liu’s Hot Pot gang were planning to run their operation.

Chongqing gives the caper movie template a clever, good-hearted twist. Yang does a lot to play with our expectations, but there is a massive third act all-hands-on-deck beatdown that is as good as any action movie released this year. Yet, the film is really all about friendship and camaraderie, becoming much like comfort food itself in its depiction of the four reunited classmates.

Having starred in Monster Hunt, the highest grossing Chinese film until the release of Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid, Bai Baihe has clearly already arrived in her home territory. However, Chongqing could be the film that really breaks her out internationally. She is terrific as Yu, conveying her sweet vulnerability, but also giving her an edge. Chen Kun brings his usual fierceness as Liu, but also develops some rather appealing chemistry with Bai. Although Four Eyes is obviously a bit of a nebbish stock character, Yu Entai still manages to scratch out some rather touching moments for him, but Qin Hao hardly makes an impression as Xu Dong, the third guy.

There are real stakes involved in Chongqing, yet despite the ruthlessness of the bad guys and the chaos of the melee, it has a surprisingly gentle vibe. Yang pulls off some smooth reversals and choreographs the capery business quite adroitly. It is a lot of good clean fun and also endearingly nostalgic. Highly recommended, Chongqing Hot Pot opens this Friday (4/1) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Monster Hunt: China’s Top Grossing Film of All-Time

As the age of legends comes to a close, veterans of the Monster Hunt Bureau are facing some pretty severe structural unemployment. They have just been too good at their job, but when a civil war in the monster realms spills over into the human world, their skills will be needed again. However, choosing sides will be trickier than they imagine in Raman Hui’s CGI-live action Chinese blockbuster, Monster Hunt (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York with both subtitled and dubbed screenings.

Song Tianyin is not much, but his absentee palace swordsman father still set him up as the mayor of their provincial village. He is about to be swept up into the monster’s civil strife when junior monster hunter Huo Xiaolan tracks two monsters in disguise to Song’s inn. Zhugao and Fat Ying are desperately protecting the pregnant queen, whose unborn baby is some sort of prophesized Jedi-Matrix Chosen One. The evil monster rebels have followed her into the human lands to end their royal line—and they are really big.

Although Huo initially captures Zhugao and Fat Ying, they manage to wriggle away, but she knows they will not get far. Since the Monster Queen was able to transfer her unborn baby to Song, Huo knows they will always be close by. Huo convinces Song to carry the baby, despite his understandable gender-role confusion, so they can sell him to a dealer. Evidently, monster babies are quite a delicacy. Yet, when the little “radish” springs into the world, they inevitably cannot stop themselves from getting emotionally attached.

So why can’t humans and monsters live together Alan Yuen asks us with his heavy-handed script. Maybe because those big marauding beasts really seem pretty darned dangerous. Nevertheless, the little radish is rather cute. Hui, who co-directed Shrek the Third, gives the monsters a good deal of personality, specifically tailoring them for the Chinese-centric market. It is easy to see why little boys would flock to Monster Hunt, even though it is somewhat more bittersweet than most mainstream American animated films. Of course, some of that is necessitated by the set-up for the sequel already in production.

Bai Baihe’s freshly minted superstar status is largely due to her breakout work in Hunt. She is indeed slyly engaging as Huo, especially in her scenes with older rival Luo Gang, nicely played Jiang Wu, who manages to maintain his hardboiled gravitas amid all the chaos and cuteness. On the other hand, Jing Boran is an awkward combination of klutzy shtick and faceless blandness, but to be fair, he probably did not expect to be stepping into Song’s shoes. Well after production began, he replaced Kai Ko, when the Tiny Times actor was swept up in the Jaycee Chan business.

Monster Hunt also features Tang Wei and Yao Chen in goofy, slightly macabre Tim Burton-esque cameos that bizarrely play down their glamour. Sandra Ng and Eric Tsang add further star power, fitting comfortably into the roles of bickering monsters Zhugao and Fat Ying, when they are wearing their human skins.

The monsters are quite impressive, which would be the most important part of a film called Monster Hunt. Nevertheless, the narrative is disappointingly familiar and much of the broad humor will fall flat with American audiences. Still, the film is a genuine phenomenon (controversies of box-office inflation notwithstanding). Hui does what he does best quite well, but he should apply more of his Hollywood experience during the script-development period. Interesting but not essential for animation fans, Monster Hunt opens in both formats this Friday (1/22) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

A Wedding Invitation: A Korean and Chinese Rom Com Production Marriage

Love means never having to ask: “where have you been for the last five years?”  When dumping Li Xing, He Qaio Qaio thought they needed time to establish their careers.  If they were still single five years later, they should get married at that point.  However, a lot can happen in five years, including his eleventh hour engagement to the boss’s daughter.  As you might have guessed, He will try to win back her soul mate in Oh Ki-hwan’s A Wedding Invitation (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Yes, you probably think you have seen this film before, just with a less attractive cast.  He Qaio Qaio does indeed travel to Beijing, ostensibly to celebrate Li Xing’s wedding, but really with the intent to seduce and disrupt.  She even enlists her gay best friend to pretend to be her lover, in hopes of making Li Xing jealous.  Oh, but not so fast.  In its third act, Invitation veers into three hanky territory, doing what commercial South Korean cinema does best.

Frankly, if you want to enjoy the guilty pleasure of a weepy melodrama, you have to look east.  Hollywood does not do Affairs to Remember anymore.  Everything has to be ironic or quirky these days.  A Multinational co-production, Wedding features a Mainland and Taiwanese cast and a largely Korean crew on the other side of the camera. 

It is a division of labor that works relatively well.  As He, the luminous Bai Bai-he is initially exasperating in the Julia Roberts portion of the film and then heartbreaking in the Il Mare-esque conclusion.  Although Eddie Peng is no stranger to the rom-com genre (having been totally overshadowed by Shu Qi in Doze Niu’s Love, for instance), he really comes into his own with his work as Li Xing.  While suitably earnest, there is also an edge to his Top Chef contending leading man turn.  Pace Wu (a.k.a. We Pei Ci) does not get much dramatic heavy lifting, but she is far more charismatic than comparably inconvenient fiancées in rom-coms past.

In the opening screwball section, viewers are likely to wince at the flat-footed He, but down the stretch they are guaranteed to get a little misty-eyed for her.  Sure, that is all very manipulative, but audiences will feel like they have been through a lot with these characters.  Oh, the rom com specialist, deftly manages the frequent flashbacks and keeps the proceedings pleasantly pacey.  Recommended for those not afraid of a little sentiment (or a lot), A Wedding Invitation opens this Friday (5/24) at the AMC Empire in New York and the AMC Metreon in San Francisco.