An okay drama that’s just mid

Everything about this drama is just mid. Average. Okay. There is nothing outstanding about it, it spends most of the time just cruising along as medium speed and medium pace with hardly any strong emotional investment in any of the characters. Wayne Lai is completely wasted here as the character he plays is completely two-dimensional as this nice guy ex-stuntman and this does not change even 21 episodes in, and I know it will not change due to the pacing and story beats happening. The only character worth watching is again with the awesome Rebecca Zhu as this strange wildcard of a person who suddenly returns home. Despite her past being the most interesting, it is barely touched upon, again wasting a huge opportunity. I really wanted to like this drama because Brian Chu gets to be a lead character and I do thoroughly like his acting such as in Al Cappacino, but here he is like a plank of wood with rarely any facial emotions outside of his typical thousand yard stare. Overall, this is not a bad drama, but it’s nothing exceptional either, it is just average and that is a huge shame.

Update: I just completed watching this series today and well… it is still pretty average. There were some touching moments, but overall it doesn’t shift my rating. What I found hilarious at the end was the romance between Brian Chu and Rebecca Zhu’s characters. Brian just suddenly blurts out “Hey, let’s be together” but he doesn’t love her and she just brushes it off. This made sense as they both has no romantic moments together in the drama. But, suddenly, in the final episode in a flash forward to the future scene for 1 minute we see the implication that they are together without the show outright stating it. Yes, it is really cheap for not showing us them getting to the romance stage, but at least I can say it is a better love story then Twilight. Literally.

You know, the entire show kept asking if 輕功 was an actual thing, and we see some implications that 輕功 does indeed exist, but I think the show missed out on an opportunity here. If 輕功 was real in the world of the drama, surely 氣功 is real, and if 氣功 is real then surely 九陽神功 is real, and if 九陽神功 is real…

Read More

Movie is terrible

I watched this movie and found it terrible. There were some scary moment for sure, but even before we get to the scary parts there is a really confusing tripping intro to the movie where our protagonist is working out how to deal with his girlfriend's death. This was a clusterf*** of nonsense until we get to the hiking trip.

The only actor worth a s*** was David Chiang as he had some real complex backstory that actually had me routing for him, even when his ultimate decision was the massacre of the entire village and kill his daughter's rapist before having his body split into different wine urns. That was some dark stuff, but I can understand and even sympathise with why he did it. The other characters that went on the hike and got tangled up in this mess I really didn't care about, and of course they give the main protagonist the power to see ghosts. Convenient yo.

It ends with everybody dying and the the evil ghost end boss is still floating around, so basically nothing is really rectified. Terrible

Read More

Boring…

Anyone who tells you this is a good movie was on drugs while watching it. Too much CGI, the main protagonists are unlikeable and the movies’ biggest sin? Wasting the amazing actor Kara Wai!

A warning: there will be some big spoilers here, but these will be needed to reveal some details of the movie so you can understand my issues with the movie. It mainly follows this girl played by Jessie Li who could see monsters since she was a child so her mother abandoned her at a mental hospital. I know we are meant to feel sorry for her but I really didn’t care because the actor really couldn’t carry it off. It felt like she was trying to act *gasp!* and lacked authenticity.

And then we have the male lead Shawn Yue as Meng who is a monster hunter. Everybody in the movie calls him rubbish and a second rate hunter and this is true, he really is useless. Near the end of the movie, while still being useless, he loses his left arm so he gets a new one from a side character called Uncle Ping who puts all his power into it. Even with his new arm he still sucks, and only wins his fight against a top hunter because of some dirty tricks and all the while was as graceful as a drunk horse. The final battle was poorly choreographed and there was way too much cgi and shakey cam it was almost impossible to follow.

There is this super crystal that can grant hunters immeasurable strength. Our main male lead gets this crystal and yet is unable to defeat out main big bad played by Kara Wai. Instead, the final battle is ended in 15 seconds as Jessie suddenly pulls a Yugioh and understands the heart of the cards and does one move… hold her hand out and then twist it like Aaron Kwok in his Never Ending Love MV. This defeats Kara somehow without any dramatic build up or awesome final confrontational struggle. Kara just stands and screams and boom done. Lame.

I just hate how they wasted Kara because she is a fantastic actor that just oozes charisma and malice. In this movie she just talks a bit and gets around with loads of cgi around her. It was one really lazy part for her and doesn’t allow her to show off her other acting chops. There is one scene she leans into a sculpture and basically rubs her chest over it during an exposition bit. Was that necessary?

And a massive plothole here is that that super crystal could be absorbed to power up anyone, why didn’t Kara Wai use it to power up? Instead she leaves it floating around her domain… that makes no sense. When Shawn appears in front if her near the end and she says “you have absorbed the power of the crystal?” No shit, what were you expecting to happen by leaving it there?

The best part of the movie? Paper. A character that can origami himself into any shape and is the comedy sidekick to Shawn. But again, it is CGI. The CGI is very good, but it cannot carry a movie that is poorly executed. Avoid this movie

Read More

This has Wong Jing's trademarks all over it

TVB: What should we do for a TV drama?
Wong Jing: Hear me out. It's the 90s, there is this night club where the girls there sell their bodies for cash but they are not called prostitutes, we can't call them that. Then we have some goldfish there that men can only look at and not touch, but later they get touched, then we have this girl sell her virginity because that's what horny men wanna see. Add in a few triads and drugs and cops, this will be a hit!
TVB: Dude...
WJ: I'm bringing back Monica Chan
TVB: F yeah! I'm in!
WJ: And we'll play all the popular HK cantopop songs from the 80s and 90s!
TVB: Whoa... what about licence fees...
WJ: I know the owners, I'll call in some favours
TVB: Dude! This is gonna be a hit!

Update: ending sucks

Read More

Boring af!

So boring! Man like wtf were the producers thinking? A young Justice Bao is all good but come on, a 10 year old kid as Zhan Zhao running around with a sword and doing dangerous stuff? No! What were they smoking?

The worst part is that it all takes place at an Inn and I could tell it would not deviate from that inn because I am 10 episodes in and they are still there investigating the same single case. I know this is a young Bao Zheng who has yet to become an official, but they make him look incompetent as he is stuck in this inn trying to unravel a murder mystery while being unable to leave due to the outside being too dangerous, all the while being protected by a 10-year-old. Geez.

It started off looking really promising but hot dang the mystery has no pulling power and I got so bored so I am going to drop it. The whole point of Justice Bao is that he solves multiple cases - one after the other - using his wit and intelligence to showcase his abilities, but this drama is clearly focused on one case and one location. This could have worked but only if it wasn’t associated to Justice Bao. Why do this?

But the worst sin of this drama? None of the female actors in it are memorable. They are all just a mush and nobody stands out at all. Wait I take that back, there is one girl Zi Fu Er who played Bai Ruan Ruan who clearly had a main role but was… sadly… ugly. They somehow managed to make a pretty girl look ugly, and that in of itself takes effort.

Read More