Customer Reviews

All About Women

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mark it down: "All About Women" (2008) is the single most entertaining Chinese romantic comedy in existence.

One might think that such a claim really doesn't say much considering the rather unexceptional output of quality rom coms from Hong Kong and Mainland China. "West Lake Moment" (2004) was probably the best up to this point, but there have been other entertaining titles such as "Good Times Bed Times" (2003), "Drink Drank Drunk" (2005), "Love Undercover" (2002), etc. Nevertheless, the Chinese are still far behind the Koreans, who have literally dominated the rom com genre during the 21st century.

Enter "All About Women", which knocks out the competition in a surprisingly effortless fashion that will have professional critics dumping in their Depends. Like most great Chinese films made after the year 2000, this one is destined to be trashed up and down the block while earning an IMDb average score well below the latest fad (which just so happens to be the endless line of big-budget Chinese historical epics that ape Hollywood with poor scriptwriting, zero energy, and overblown pretentiousness). So how - exactly - does "All About Women" accomplish such a high level of entertainment? Well, it uses the following strategy.

1. Kwai Lunmei plays a badass punk rocker/amateur boxer/internet novelist with an imaginary boyfriend; and 2. Zhou Xun plays an uptight doctor with selective full-body stiffness and a lifetime supply of pheromone-enhanced love potion.

Absolutely brilliant! Both actresses are amongst the most charismatic in the Eastern hemisphere, and the mere idea of having BOTH in the same film is a good one. Add to this the scheme of having both actresses play over-the-top roles, and the idea becomes - that's right - absolutely brilliant! The only possible way that this faultless strategy could fail is if the script was terrible. Most unexpectedly, this movie almost feels Japanese in its restrained quirkiness and use of creative scriptwriting. Despite the high octane wackiness that's packed into two full hours, it's difficult to think of one moment that doesn't succeed. That's quite an accomplishment for a Chinese movie of this kind, and with two awesome lead actresses eating up the camera, there's enough starlet firepower to make this the single best Chinese rom com in existence.

In other words, "All About Women" will garner a whole lot of bad ratings and furious reviews. Not because it's a bad film, but because it panders to moviegoers who purely and simply want to be ENTERTAINED. An unforgivable sin in these cinematic dark ages we currently live in, where most lemmings seem incapable of delineating between good popcorn entertainment and soulless garbage. How do you think "Red Cliff" (2008) earns so much acclaim? It's essentially a brainless film with subpar scriptwriting, exaggerated/forced dialogue, and lame action scenes; but its overblown reputation precedes it with such marketing force that 90% of the movie-going public decide to love it even before witnessing the opening title sequence. I tell you this, John Woo's return to Chinese film-making was enough to earn an IMDb average rating of 7.0 regardless of the essentially worthless byproduct that was actually made. In like manner, "The Warlords" was driven by coupling the testosterone of three of the most popular East Asian actors with the big-budget historical epic. This project didn't even qualify as a successful popcorn film, and it ends up winning a BEST PICTURE award. What a joke.

"All About Women" isn't graced with the same self-fulfilling prophecies, leaving it wholly underrated and under-appreciated. There are so many effective comedic set pieces within that it's almost beyond my understanding as to how someone could possibly hate this film. How can you not laugh at how Kwai screws up that live concert? I've never seen a scene quite like that. How can you not be entertained during that crazy wedding gown scene with Zhou? This is great stuff that arguably rises above simple brainlessness for no other reason than for it's impressive creativity that tosses lovable protagonists into dubious situations by using their character flaws and quirks in a variety of ways. Heck, the script for "All About Women" is qualitatively better than any Chinese historical epic in recent memory because it kept me engaged, amused, and on the edge of my seat for practically every minute of its running time.

This film is about 3 women and their love lifes. The first women uses her scientistic skills to win men over. The second women is a punk rocker with an emaginary boyfriend and the third women is a drop dead gorgeous businesswoman who every man wants like..that!

They of course end up running into each other and combine together to get what they want. The acting and storyline is good and the special effects were cool and funny. I really enjoyed the film.

I saw the trailer for this as a preview on another disc I watched from netflix. It looked good so I made the purchase. I was not disappointed. It was really a funny film. It has english subtitles. There are some parts I only understood, because I have become familiar with asian culture. That sad, it's a great film even for those not familiar with asian culture. I would definitely recommend it. One of the guys from Kungfu Hustle is in it. The main characther is quite hillarious. She get stiff like a board if a man touches her. So funny!

An unexpected entry from Hong Kong action director Tsui Hark, best known for seminal action movies he produced and directred from the 1980s and 1990s like A CHINESE GHOST STORY, the ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA series (which introduced the world to Jet Li), and John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW, ALL ABOUT WOMEN is a screwball comedy about three modern women looking for love in modern China.

There's a social agenda at play in this movie: it portrays three types of women who could not possibly have existed in China during the height of the Communist era, but are now archetypes that have arisen in the urban 21st Century. There's the millionairess enterpreneur, the shy-but-brilliant-scientist and the punk rocker. As is the rule of screwball comedy, each of them is flawed or cracked in some way - the millionairess is a take-no-prisoners feminist whose selfishness tramples over everyone, even her female friends, the punk rocker is a borderline psychotic with a pop star as her imaginary boyfriend, and the biochemist tries to isolate the chemical basis of sexual and romantic attraction, which is what kicks the plot into gear.

What's refreshing about this movie is the independence of the women: each of them go after what they want entirely on their own terms without the help of men and aren't punished by it, and it's their solidarity that helps each of them at the end of the day. Tsui Hark is genuinely interested in asking the question "What do women want?" without a sexist point of view, and he brings the manic filmmaking style of his action movies to the increasingly frantic and oddball comedy setpieces that litter the story.

It's not a perfect movie, with its throw-everything-even-the-kitchen-sink-at-the-wall-and-see-how-much-sticks approach, but it has a freshness and creativity often missing from Hollywood movies. Stand-out performances include Zhao Xun as the nerdy scientist, an actress best know for her dramatic roles in China, here acting in her first comedy role, and Kitty Chung given an astonishing performance that's really a pitch-perfect Chinese version of Rosalind Russell at her best in those Hollywood comedies of the 1940s.