Hong Kong Romanctic Movie 2009
Happily Ever After
Cast And Crew
Country: Hong Kong
Production Company: Emperor Motion Pictures/ Rex Film Productions Co. Ltd.
Genre: Drama/ Romance
Director: Azrael Chung/ Ivy Kong
Starring: Ken Hung, Michelle Wai, Carlos Chan, Hui Siu Hung, Jacky Leung, Gladys Ho
Length: 92 mins
Date of release: 27th August, 2009
Reviews
Ou Yang Guan Nan (Michelle Wai) and Shi Tu Jie (Ken Hung) are born on the same day, have same interest on photography and characters. Both get to know each other from the school debate competition and they also like each other. Class monitor Lu Jun Wen (Carlos Chan) who accompanies Nan most of the time also has interest with Nan but fails to woo her.
After class they would visit a hill behind their school to take photo at midnight and take the rainbow’s photo after rain. After finish high school Jie used half of his savings to buy a polaroid camera and give it to Nan as gift. Nan is mistaken with his intention, thinking that he wanted to tease her and later slaps his face. One day when Nan realizes Jie has been chasing her all this time it was already too late.
Four years later Jie opens a photography shop. On the same year their former school holds a reunion gathering with Nan and Jie meeting once again. Nan wants to get serious with Jie this time but sadly Jie decides to leave her after a short term relationship. Does Jie decided to leave Nan for good? Will Nan accept Wen’s love? Who will Nan choose in the end?
I'm not generally a fan of EEG propaganda movies star vehicles, but the simple truth is that I had f@#$ all else on my dance card for the evening and I really do enjoy dinners with people who, like myself, were stupid committed enough to Hong Kong cinema to move here.
That last remark is totally unfair, because I consider myself far and away the dumbest of the bunch. The only signs of poor intellect I can detect in them is their continued tolerance of me. I must, on occasion, be somehow useful.
Well, that makes a lovely transition, because even before the movie started, my friends were encouraging me to 'Dynast-ize' this upscale theatre by talking back to what we knew was going to be a contender for one of the more laughable offerings this year.
They actually wanted me to talk smack to/during the film.
And boy did I run my mouth. I said terrible, mean, awful things, to the extent that at the film's emotional climax I blurted out a prediction of pedophilia.
Do you notice that I make sick, ugly jokes, but still don't have spoilers? Trust me with your viewing habits, but not your naked proclivities...
Nearly everything in this movie was ripe for ridicule, and I even went after the things that weren't ripe yet. I think I actually talked more than some of the main characters...
I felt very happy that I had entertained my friends in the theatre and, occasionally, the other 6 people in there.
And I actually must admit, I didn't hate this movie. It was pedestrian, overwrought, laughably predictable, horribly acted, written, and directed, and it made me feel very old and white, so far was I from the target demographic.
But this film was fun because it had so many narrative and dramatic hangnails which I could grab hold of and tear off a comic morsel.
The last crap film I watched was so well-manicured and such a repository of proletarian dullardry that I was reduced to hurling invective at it.
Happily Ever After was a fun time, not in spite of its shortcomings but because of them.
I liked it if for no other reason than the male lead looked a lot like Dicky Cheung at a young age.
So when they make that biopic, the kid will easily get the role.
One of the best things I can say about this film is that it managed to make a place in the narrative that read "CUT HERE FOR CHINA" in big (simplified) characters, but still managed to tell a coherent story after that point and didn't pander to the (big Red) Panda, so to speak.
Unlike so many of its contemporaries, this film did nothing that would qualify it to play the female lead in a home video or photograph in which Edison Chen plays China.
It’s tragic: Nam (played by Michelle Wai) can’t find her boyfriend To-chi (pop idol Ken Hung). “Everyone is saying he’s dead,” she screams at a convenience store clerk in the movie’s opening scene. They may have a point there as, ever since the two’s reunion at a high school anniversary event, Nam seems to be the only person in the world who’s seen To-chi. It also doesn’t bode well that, for some reason, her new relationship is freaking out both her widowed father (Hui Shiu-hung) and, as an afterthought, her long-term admirer (Carlos Chan). So is Happily Ever After a drama on mental illness? An incident of metaphysical occurrence? Or merely a case of farcically awkward scriptwriting?
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