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Review
by Kozo: |
A summer hit in HK, this romantic fantasy from Jingle
Ma is shamelessly manipulative, incredibly cheesy, and
totally sappy. It goes to extreme lengths to yank your
chains and push your buttons...and it works. Amazingly,
this manufactured piece of sap is also an entertaining,
compelling movie.
An HK version of Ghost and Always, Fly Me to Polaris stars Richie Ren as Onion, a blind-mute who’s in love
with his nurse Autumn (Cecilia Cheung). Before any feelings
can be exchanged, he dies in a Meet Joe Black kinda way and proceeds to win a celestial contest. This
flimsy plot device states he can have one wish - which
he uses to live again. They deny him that, but give
him the opportunity to return for one week.
There’s
a catch: no one will recognize him and he will be unable
to reveal his true identity to anyone. He returns nonetheless
for the chance to see Autumn, and subsequently suffers
untold buckets of heartache and pain as every last facet
of his resurrection prevents him from reuniting with
his stricken love, who apparently loved him too.
Where this movie fails is pretty
obvious. Despite great production values, the characters
lack depth, the story complexity, and the film an overall
quality that can only be described as panache. This
year’s When I Look Upon the Stars was similar
in its sap potential, but it had a smart, stylish quality
that made the synthetic mush easier to swallow. Fly
Me to Polaris is more similar to the hokey and overwrought Love and the City. Like that film, the sap and
sorrow is thrown at us straight up, and the chance for
alienation is quite high.
Still, Jingle Ma punches all
the right emotional buttons and they certainly cast
the right people. Taiwanese pop star Richie Ren has
a sympathetic quality and the remarkable Cecilia Cheung
is quite moving as Autumn. It hurts to say it, but this
is a workable piece of commercial crap. This is a made-to-order
date movie with pretty stars and palatable pathos. Romantic drama fans
will dig this film, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but
I wasn’t unmoved. (Kozo 1999) |
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