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My Sweetie
     

(left) Gaile Lok, and (right) Stephy Tang and Sammy in My Sweetie.
Chinese: 甜絲絲  
Year: 2004
Director: Patrick Kong
Producer: Paco Wong
Cast: Sammy, Stephy Tang Lai-Yun, Gaile Lok, Crystal Tin Yui-Lei, Emme Wong Yi-Man, Ella Koon Yun-Na, Kary Ng Yiu-Fei, Monie Tung Man-Lei, Yan Ng Yat-Yin, Kayle Kwan Ji-Tung, Sam Lee Chan-Sam, Cheung Tat-Ming, Chow Chung, Sam Sam, Tang Chi-Fung, Tin Kai-Man, Joe Cheng Cho, Ronald Cheng Chung-Kei, Miriam Yeung Chin-Wah, Edmond Leung Hon-Man, Siu Yeah-Jim, Donald Tong Kim-Hong
The Skinny: Insipid youth romantic comedy that could entertain eight year-olds. Those looking for more mature storytelling, or even some creativity, should check out the latest Street Fighter video game instead of My Sweetie.
 
Review
by Kozo:

An examination of your storm drain could prove much more exciting than My Sweetie, a youth romantic "comedy" that's more insipid than interesting. Commercial Radio DJ Sammy stars as Lo, a too-nice guy who works for a shampoo marketing department, and is best buds with silly office girls Crystal Tin, Kary Ng (of Cookies), and Ella Koon. Lo also has a dream lover, the full-lipped Snow (model Gaile Lok), a sweet but somewhat dim stunner who Lo sees on the way to work every day. One day she disappears, but she reappears as Lo's new office colleague, meaning the dopey good guy has been given a chance to snag his dream lover.

But Lo also has another new colleague: Chan Chi-Keung (Head Cookie Stephy Tang), who goes by the English name Strong Chan and generally pouts for no apparent reason. Keung is a longtime nemesis of Lo, having tortured him at one or two times during their wildly uninteresting childhood. The two immediately are at odds, but a stormy office relationship is put aside for random and sometimes completely lame office hijinks involving boss Chow Chung (Daniel Wu's father in Love Undercover). The old bat likes to hit on the ladies, and competes for Snow's questionably coherent affections with Lo. After a water-skiing contest (?) puts Lo on the boss's hit list, Lo is paired with Keung for a "winner-takes-all" marketing proposal. The two must deliver a dynamite shampoo marketing plan or be fired. Meanwhile, Lo tries to win over Snow, Keung reveals herself to be a lot nicer than she's advertised, and the audience, if they're smart, has figured out this film's plot. If they're even smarter, they've also stopped this DVD and started an entirely different one.

If ever there was a movie that revealed the secret to the success of the Twins, Shu Qi, or any other famously reviled actresses, it would be My Sweetie. People say those girls can't act. Well, once you've seen the parade of egregious non-acting from the likes of Stephy Tang, Gaile Lok, Kary Ng, and more, you'll be begging for more Charlene Choi whine or cutesy Shu Qi baby talk. Sure, those girls can be annoying and tiresome, but they do project some form of emotion that one could quantify as "acting". Sadly, of the girls here, only Crystal Tin appears to act, and her character and performance err on the annoying side. The cute young things of My Sweetie generally emote in obvious cartoonish fashion, and female lead Stephy Tang is not convincingly sassy. She's certainly cute, but that alone is not enough to make her watchable or worthy of a lead role.

Lead guy Sammy may be low on the eye candy meter, but he's a goofy, game fellow who doesn't take himself seriously. He also possesses the screen charisma of a stuffed monkey, and probably the acting skills too. Then again, it might be harsh to rate he or the rest of the cast on this movie alone, since My Sweetie possesses a screenplay that even Wong Jing probably wouldn't put his name on. The stuff that goes on here isn't romantic or even funny. It's just rote youth comedy stuff that's strung together with random gags, minor weirdness, and far too much verbalization to be entertaining. Besides Lo's omnipresent and uninteresting voice-over, the characters express their feelings in five-paragraph speeches, and copious metaphor is dispensed instead of actual displays of emotion. This would make a better novel, though still a questionably good one.

If My Sweetie has a positive, it's this: it's so uninteresting that it doesn't register as insultingly terrible. This is standard below-average multiplex fodder that would have been right at home in the early nineties, except back then they released four times as much product, and some of it was even good. Nowadays, My Sweetie counts as a major theatrical release, which could be the saddest thing ever. It's questionable if A-list stars could sell the uninvolving platitudes of My Sweetie, but with B-listers like Sammy and Stephy Tang, you can count on this being a truly uninteresting affair. Even big name cameos from a couple of comedy superstars can't stop this from being an uninteresting film. There's that word again: uninteresting. If you look next to it in the dictionary, you may find My Sweetie. (Kozo 2004)

 

Availability:

DVD (Hong Kong)
Region 0 NTSC
Mei Ah Entertainment
16x9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Cantonese and Mandarin Language Tracks
Dolby Digital 5.1 / DTS 5.1
Removable English and Chinese Subtitles
Deleted scenes, trailer, "Making of" featurette

images courtesy of www.mov3.com

   
 
 
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