This movie is available for purchase at www.sensasian.com

Rating:

2

Year of release: 2005

Genre: comedy

Director: Wai Ka-Fai

Stars: Ronald Cheng, Cecilia Cheung, Lau Ching-Wan, Francis Ng, Cherrie Ying

Rated IIA for mild language

VCD Information

Company: Mei Ah

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese/English electronically printed on lower "black bar"

Extras: trailer

Notes: There's some pixellation that comes up in parts, but this is a solid VCD overall.

Related links:

Lau Ching-Wan biography
Francis Ng biography
Movie Review index
Main Page

Himalaya Singh

Ugh! Someone please pass the Excedrin, Pepto or Heineken -- I need something to help deal with watching this stinker. Himalaya Singh is one of those movies that you realize about fifteen minutes into the proceedings that surely you must have something better to do with your time than waste it with tripe like this. It's dumb, dense, dim, dopey, dull... am I getting through to you yet?

Now, I'm sure some of of you will want me to give some justification for the above rant. I just can't really bring up any specific examples, because the production as a whole is just extremely flawed. From the god-awful soundtrack to the incredibly bad CGI, no feature -- big or small -- is done with any sort of professionalism or panache here. Worse yet, the director (Wa Kai-Fai) seemed to see the picture's shortcomings beforehand and thusly instructed everyone to try and cover up the faults using the fabulous acting method of screaming, waving their arms around and using embarassing facial tics. It's really amazing that a lot of the same cast and crew worked on Wa Kai-Fai's last movie Fantasia, which was one of my favorites from 2004. Lau Ching-Wan, in particular, seems to be almost a former shell of his super-cool self. It's sad seeing one of the most talented actors in Hong Kong basically reduced to imitating Rowan Atkinson's horribly annoying "Mr. Bean" character.

I'm sure most of you regular readers (all two of you) out there know that I am not a film "snob" at all. I enjoy Wong Jing's movies just as much as Wong Kar-Wai's. And I know Lunar New Year movies aren't exactly known for their deep plots or moving performances. It takes a lot for me to really hate a movie -- but Himalaya Singh "delivers" most everything that can possibly go wrong with a film in spades. Between this and the mind-numbingly inane Where is Mama's Boy?, 2005 is not shaping up to be a very solid year for Hong Kong movies. Let's hope they can pick things up before things totally bottom out -- those Segal and Van Damme straight-to-DVD "gems" sitting on the new release shelf at Blockbuster are almost starting to look good.