If You Are the One

cover

Year of release: 2008

Genre: romantic comedy

Director: Feng Xiaogang

Producers: Shirley Lau, Chen Kuo-Fu, Wang Zhong-Lei, Zhang Da-Jun

Writer: Feng Xiaogang

Cinematography: Lu Yue

Editing: Liu Miao-Miao, Xiao Yang

Music: Liu Rui, Liu Qin

Stars: Ge You, Hsu Chi, Fan Wei, Alex Fong, Vivian Hsu

Rated IIA for language

Movie Review Index
Main Page

If You Are the One  If You Are the One

If You Are the One  If You Are the One

What the hell is wrong with your friendly neighborhood semi-drunken reviewer? Yes, kids, I can hear all the dozens of people following this humble site on Twitter hitting the unfollow button as I say it is with no sarcasm or sense of irony that I can say that I enjoyed a romantic comedy. Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go check out some random Category III sleazefest wash away the shame to properly steel myself for this review.

At any rate, the story centers around Qin Fen (Ge You), a forty-something man who has recently gotten rich after making an idiotic invention -- basically a glorified way to play rock paper scissors -- and so he sets about to find his wife via the murky world of online dating. Qin goes through a series of duds, but keeps meeting up by accident with Xiao Xiao (Hsu Chi). I'm sure you know the drill here -- the two eventually fall in love. But how the pair gets there and how they act afterwards is why If You Are the One succeeds where so many similar movies in the genre have failed.

I don't want to spoil too many details here. However, director Feng Xiaogang takes an conventional path. Not really that unconventional in the sense of the whole cinematic world, but Feng thankfully doesn't depend on the slapstick and melodrama that is the crutch for the genre. Rather, Feng allows the characters to develop organically, rather than force-feeding characterization and development down the audience's throat, which results in the audience actually developing feelings for the characters, instead of mindlessly gazing at their watches waiting for the pain to be over.

RATING: 7