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SYNOPSIS:
Undercover cops whom have infiltrated gangs are often killed
during missions due to their 'poor acting abilities'. Constable
Man Long Chan (Jim Chim), is handpicked to enroll incognito
into a Performance Arts Academy as an experiment in upgrading
police acting abilities. Man Long befriends fellow classmate
Dani (Charlene Choi) who is an aspiring actress. After a mission
failure that causes Man Long to almost give up on acting,
he meets a stage janitor (Anthony Wong) who illuminates his
acting path...
MOVIE REVIEW
All
the world's a stage, and all the men and women
merely players. Do you learn acting from drama school,
or do you lean more by opening your eyes to life?
That
part is just about the best in Simply Actors, as it unleashes
a slew of recognizable actors and actresses in star studded
cameo appearances, when Anthony Wong, as a theatre janitor,
takes Chan Man-long (Jim Chim) under his wing ala Morpheus
strolling down the streets with Neo, giving the latter a lesson
in the ways of the Matrix. Here, the lesson is in how to act,
given that Man-long has the propensity of nauseatingly exaggerating
himself.
As the
story goes, Man-long is a police constable
who's been assigned to do undercover duties. However,
the police force has been slighted by the underworld
for sending in moles with bad acting skills, meaning
they do not look a bit convincing as gangsters, and
are soon detected and dispatched. To cut down the
number of casualties in their tour of duty, the top
brass decides to experiment with sending their chosen
cops to a Performing Arts school, and from there, hope
that they'll pick up the tips and tricks of being
convincing performers.
The synopsis
sounds good, but I thought it had some
shades of Stephen Chow's earlier work King of Comedy,
or at least it had opportunities for Jim Chim to act
the clown under various circumstances, staged or
otherwise. There were plenty of signs in the first 10
minutes that highlight the potential of the offbeat
comedy that this could have become (check out that
rooftop scene), but alas the narrative got bogged down
by too many minor sub plots strung together in quite
an episodic manner, which made its almost 120 minute
run time seem like 3 hours.
There
were too many supporting characters (not the
cameos) coming into and going out of the movie, that
they serve to frustrate, and developments being picked
up and let go faster than you can say "Lights, Camera,
Action!". There's the introduction of the supposedly
main chief baddie, the drug lord Crazy Sam (whom I'm
not going to reveal who plays him as it's a pleasant
and hilarious surprise), Man-long's inability and
drifting from his longtime girlfriend, the coveted
roles of Romeo and Juliet in the school's stage play,
and I'm not sure why directors Chang Hing Kai and
Patrick Leung decided to bring in Lam Suet for the
final act that extends it in quite mediocre terms
(read: Unfunny).
It becomes
a little too indulgent in having to extol
the virtues of good acting, bringing in Eric Tsang to
teach the class of pompous, arrogant, pretentious
pupils (again, the generalization it makes in the
context of comedy). The bulk of it though, remains the
interaction between Man-long and fellow classmate Dani
Dan (Charlene Choi, one half of the pop group Twins),
who's a Mainland Chinese actress in the Category 3
(soft porn) industry, who's looking to improve on her
acting chops in order to get herself better roles. But
wait, if you're thinking her character will get
raunchy, just be reminded that there's nothing more
but an artificial, exaggerated enhancement of her
assets with the help of a maximizer.
Charlene
Choi's chemistry opposite Jim Chim could
probably be the best thing in the movie, because in
real life, the former's the protege, and it's quite
reel mimicking real when you see them sharing
experiences and trying their best to excel in their
course. But unfortunately, too much of a good thing is
harmful, especially when it interferes with pacing,
and decides to junk comedy for more drama, dragging on
like a never ending television series that seem to
plod on.
SPECIAL
FEATURES :
Nil, despite what the sleeve says about having bundled
a Making of feature (unless it's an easter egg so well hidden).
There're only 2 trailers bundled which auto starts when the
DVD is popped into the player, one being "881"
and "Alone".
These can be skipped with your "title" key.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Visual
transfer is somewhat soft, with some graininess detected in
some scenes. Overall still reasonably good, and at worse it
may be akin to watching a VCD. While the DVD offers a total
of 4 audio formats, 3 of which are Cantonese and 1 Mandarin,
the selection of audio format options 3 and 4 (Cantonese DTS
and Mandarin 5.1) seemed to be swapped. But no frets and you
can toggle the audio option on the fly anyway when your desired
audio format doesn't seem to work.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Stefan Shih
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