On the ontological virtues of having a hose for a penis
Written: Jan 02 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Amusing overall, some very funny stuff
Cons: Doesn't quite measure up to Chow's best
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| JavaDevil's Full Review: Sixty Million Dollar Man |
Don't feel bad if you've never heard of Stephen Chow (Chow Sing-Chi to the Chinese). Most people in the USA haven't even though in Hong Kong he's easily considered right up there with Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat in terms of popularity and box office earnings. That's because he's not a gun-toting or karate-chopping action star. He's a comedian and comedy just doesn't translate as well as shootouts and multi-fisted chop-socky battles. As the immortal cultural philosopher Jean-Claude Van Damme once observed: "Not everybody can understand talking but everyone understands a punch in the face."
Sixty Million Dollar Man is usually said to be sort of a takeoff of The Mask but, though I haven't seen The Mask myself, I don't think it involved some of the toilet humor seen here. While not among Stephen Chow's best films, Sixty Million Dollar Man is amusing and worth a rental if you want to see what the guy is about.
The film opens with a servant, Tat, of an insanely rich family waking up early in the morning to milk a cow. He tells it "I wish I would marry a wife like you so she can milk me every day!" This character is played by Ng Man-Tat, who appears in most of Stephen Chow's films. In the great tradition of fat guy/skinny guy comedy duos, Ng is to Chow as Hardy is to Laurel, as Gleason is to Carney, as Penn is to Teller, and as Farley is to Spade.
Tat serves the milk to the spoiled son of the wealthy family, Sing (played by Chow himself), who gargles, spits it out onto the bed, and then tells the maid to buy a new one. After taking a bath with some of his female servants, he flies in via helicopter to the college run by his father in Honolulu. Sing plays a cruel prank on a fellow student involving an outhouse and tells another (HK pop singer Gigi Leung) that she's ugly and he specifically requested that no ugly women be allowed at his college.
Later, Sing attends a lecture by a professor with an Einstein-esque hair style who tells the class that one day people will have their organs replaced by machine parts that use powerful computers so that we will be able to change our own shape and "imitate everything". The professor then gruesomely dissects ("butchers" would be a more apt word) a cadaver in front of the class, causing everyone to pass out from nausea and leaving little doubt that he is truly a mad scientist.
Getting to the main plot point, Sing witnesses a gangster killing one night, gets chased around his house by the mob until they capture and tie him up with Tat, and frantically tries to figure a way out of their dilemma while a time bomb ticks away in front of them. In a scene that seems to be a reference to both Lethal Weapon 2 and Die Hard 2, Sing has Tat sit on a toilet and presses some kind of ejection button that shoots Tat to safety up in the air while the house gets blown to bits.
We come to find out that only Sing's lips and brain have survived, enabling his disembodied mouth to hold conversations with people. The mad professor offers to build Sing a new body with remarkable qualities such as the ability to change into a giant tube of toothpaste and a talking toilet. But the drawback is that he has to eat batteries to power his artificial organs. And his penis is now a garden hose. Luckily, these things will come in handy at his new job as a teacher at the worst high school in town.
As I mentioned, Stephen Chow likes to use at least some potty humor in his films which is one reason why, in the post-Farrelly Brothers world, he could conceivably find an audience in the West. On the other hand, his brand of comedy is called "Mo Lei Tau" (or "Mo Lai To") which means "makes no sense". There are moments in his movies which make you just sit there, blink, and go "Huh?" but those can be some of the most hilarious parts. Also, Chow is well-known for throwing in lots of puns that simply don't translate well but as an English-subtitle reader myself, I've never found that a problem in appreciating him. He's still damn funny.
And, as in so many American comedies, Chow throws in parodies of famous flicks (from both sides of the Pacific) into his work. Sixty Million Dollar Man features riffs on two famous scenes from Pulp Fiction (one of which is the, uh, part with the needle). Perhaps Chow isn't all that big on American films though. During one scene, Sing uses his powers to drive a group of people mad and, when asked what happened to them, he replies "They watch too many imported movies."
The script for Sixty Million Dollar Man was written by schlock-master Wong Jing, who is infamous for making up his movies as he goes along, even while filming is already in progress. And, while watching it, this film does seem like not much more than a number of silly scenarios stitched together. But Jing's sense of humor still meshes well with Chow's as they've worked together several times before.
Of the 6 or 7 Stephen Chow films I've seen thus far, I'd place this somewhere just above the middle. It has a lot of the rambunctiousness viewers have come to expect from him but somehow it doesn't work quite as well as his best films. If I were feeling better, I'd give the film 4 stars but New Year's Day crankiness is overtaking me. Now, time for some more leftover eggnog...
Recommended:
Yes
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JavaDevil
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Location: Von Braun City, Sea Of Tranquility, Moon
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