Chinese Odyssey 2002 (2002)

Owing to constant nagging from her warty old mother, a Princess runs away from the family schloss using random acts of Kung Fu to beat up on the staff, rather than the more obvious but less cinematic approach of walking out the front door. To prevent being hoiked back to the palace and sent to bed without any dinner, she takes on the persona of a man, though it must be said, not a very masculine one.Meanwhile in a village a local restaurateur is a known bad mannered all around bully who has to resort to eating loutishly at his competitor's café as a ploy to entice people to his own eating establishment where he is of course guaranteed not to be.He's also obsessed with trying to marry off his sister and this isn't going well, possibly because she dresses as a man, and is prone to beating up casual visitors using random acts of Kung Fu. In addition he's made it a condition of marriage that suitors put their hands in a furnace without suffering injury. There are no takers but when he throws in a promise to leave the village once his sister is married, a queue forms. Unfortunately all the candidates only succeed in overloading the local burns ward.Propinquitously (??) the Princess wanders into the village and she and the restaurateur form an instant bond. There is much eating and slapping on the back and close eye contact and clinking of mugs. On introducing the Princess to his sister, the three form a tight group and have many frolics and fun adventures, constantly in each other's company.This is where the confusion begins! The brother sees the Princess (remember, she is dressed as a man) as a potential husband for his sister (remember, she is dressed as a man). But secretly, the Princess is getting the hots for the brother (who is not only dressed as a man, but is one), who thinks all the hugging and offers to massage bits of his body are good clean manly fun. The sister also falls for the Princess, longingly wishing she could reveal that she is a she and innocently believing the Princess is a he and not a she and therefore a potential spouse.The audience knows that this will end badly, though sadly not for another 70 minutes. The Princess gets a hint too, when she books in to a fortune teller who incidentally looks remarkably like a woman dressed as a man who seems to know the Princess's identity and prophesies that she will be marrying some totally different man. She is disturbed but determined to persevere nevertheless.The fun and games continue until a drunken cross-dressing party where the Princess gets into drag and comes out as a woman. Everyone laughs and she reverts to her alter ego. The sister comes out as a woman and everyone laughs, but she proves she is. No-one is stressed. The brother then tries the same trick. He is ugly and everyone laughs. They all wake up in the morning in the same bed with bad heads, a general feeling that something is not at all right, and a feeling of "where do we go from here".The Princess realizes things are getting complicated (getting complicated?) and decides to leave to go "somewhere". The brother follows her and this happens for months, with adventures and random acts of Kung Fu along the way. At some point, under a peach tree, which is apparently significant, he catches up and announces to the Princess he has the soul of a woman, and the Princess kisses him. He is still under the impression that the Princess is a man and is understandably confused, though not enough to cease tongue action. She reveals to him she is actually a woman and has to prove it; and what's more, a Princess. He is convinced but now quite distressed because while he looks like he has bagged a woman, he has lost a Brother-in-law.Meanwhile, with the help of the secret service, the Emperor eventually leaves to look for his sister, the Princess. While he decides not to dress as a woman, he does go incognito and in due course comes on the village, where he meets the sister of the restaurateur. She reveals she is a woman and they fall in love though she thinks he is just a general schmo. He reinforces this image by growing an afro and wearing platform clogs. They both do the horizontal tango but privacy seems to be an issue since several members of the secret service insist on sleeping with them, apparently but not convincingly just for his protection.But love flourishes and the Emperor reveals his true identity. She is touched but insists he keep the Afro and goes back to introduce the Restaurateur's sister to Mumsy. Preparation is made for marriage. About this time the Princess turns up at the palace with her new man. Mummikins is not too keen on him for some reason and makes them both try on a set of his and hers rings, which are supposed to slip off if the marriage will fail. The rings do, and the restaurateur is sent packing.The Princess then hangs around the Palace being annoyingly insane and attempting to do injury to herself by self-inflicted random acts of Kung Fu. Finally, she runs away and finds the restaurateur. She has brought the rings. She has a cunning plan. Remembering the incident under the Peach tree, he tries on the "she" ring and vice versa and voila, all is well for some reason which has become lost in translation.Everyone gets married and the bad tempered mother is put into her place, though she appears to now have more warts than at the start of the movie. There is laughing all around and the credits roll. A sequel is threatened.

The thing that struck me most about this movie is its radiance. The music alone will tell you that this movie is about having fun.The comedy is perhaps a little bit questionable, depending on you're tastes. Sometime's it's just simple verbal jokes, and at other times, it's just completely random. I found the randomness to be a little too weird to be funny at times, but most of the humor is fine.My favorite scenes are the ones depicting pure enjoyment. One scene in particular that strikes me is the spoof of Chinese opera. Faye is singing, beautifully, as usual, and making lots of similies and such, and Tony just says a bunch of stupid stuff (probably because his character is uneducated). My favorite lines being: Faye: See those geese in the middle of the pond, enjoying each other's company like we are. Tony: Today they swim, Tomarrow they roast. Roast goose is truly delicious.Often times in a movie about love, the ones that are remembered are the ones where the characters are creative in showing their love. I mean, it's not easy to give that kind of emotion to the audience with characters they have only known for two hours.It's even harder to give the audience the enjoyment of being in the company of someone really fun. This song and dance, as well as other scenes in the movie accomplish this very well. While they're doing the ridiculous dances, Faye can be seen close to, if not bursting into laughter. The director and the actors really looked like they had great fun with this film, and that translates onto the audience.The formulaic aspect of the movie, or the part i'm not so crazy about is the last 15 minutes or so. While i don't mind the plot's development, i feel the character reactions were a bit exaggerated. Both Faye and Tony end up going crazy, literally. There needn't be such an exaggeration to depict the sadness of the characters. In fact, that shouldn't even be a focus of a movie of pure fun like this.It does ultimately end on a happy note, which is quite nice. In the end, i do find something special about this movie. Nothing really matches the pure enjoyment i feel from this movie. Every time i think of the drunken song, i can't help but smile. There are some parts of the movie which aren't quite as wonderful, but it's definitely worth you're time.

Chinese Odyssey is a thoroughly pleasant romantic comedy, captained by an extremely attractive cast of actors, and accompanied by delightful music. The plot is lifted right off of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and pulled off with remarkable wit and flair. It is certainly the best written Chinese comedy I've seen, and the gags are as much in the words and situations as in the visual setting and the facial mimicry.The movie starts off as intense comedy, with hilariously effective anachronisms strewn about. Gradually, it becomes more and more serious about the love story, which is indeed genuinely moving, thanks to the brilliant cast, particularly Vicki Zhao and Faye Wong, who are both stunning-looking.(Vicki Zhao is the kung fu girl from Shaolin Soccer; she is great; she can play anything, from emotionally devastated to deliciously sexy. And while I haven't seen beautiful songstress Faye Wong before, she looked very familiar to me, probably because she resembles Sandrine Holt a great deal. I also see in her filmography that she is in "2046", which is one of the next movies I plan to watch and review at IMDb.)Chinese Odyssey is so beautifully shot, and stars such beautiful people, that one has to watch it twice; once to read the subtitles and once to look at people's faces! :-)I don't know why everyone keeps calling this movie "nonsense" - it's not nonsense! It's the Monty Python- and Umberto Ecoesque humorous juxtaposition of elements with little or no mutual relevance! It's the highest form of comedy!Anyway, this is an extremely good, pleasant and funny movie, with no negative elements that I can think of. 9 out of 10.

Chinese Odyssey 2002 is a really funny movie. If you've seen Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, He's a Woman, She's a Man, and any Zhao Wei movie, or the original Chinese Odyssey movies you have to see this. It's hilarious in a silly Hong Kong comedy way. And it has all the elements: action scenes, magic, love stories, and a Bollywood-style song number you will never forget. Oh, get it out of my head!I don't know why it's not faring so well in the polls because I've seen it so many times but it still makes me laugh, and I haven't shown it to anyone who didn't find it funny.The shocking part is that it only cost me $2.70 to buy this movie. In a state of recession, cheap laughter is twice as enjoyable.