I don't mean to be insulting with my title but to have such a movie from a veteran director of close to 30 years and whose name have been big in HK during the 80's, I guess he must have make this movie for these 2 selected groups of audience.(I will explain later in the SPOILERS part). Yes, we know this director Tsui Hark has been making remakes or following others' box office successes formulas since the 80s and most of his recent movies have been flops. This movie give me the impression that the Tsui Hark & wife team knew the movie will not turn out well but they enjoyed the producer job. In HK cinema, producers control the fund and expenses. So the more complicated the script and more the scenes mean better money-making opportunity for the producers. The reason I guess so is all the unnecessary subplots and "extended endings" actually made the movie worse. The movie has hardly anything original. We get to see too many scenes(see SPOILERS) and ideas copied(lacking the style and class) from HK's recent years' 4 best horror, 3 from the Pang Brothers' "Eye 1 & 2", "Re-Cycle" & Leslie Cheung's last movie, "Inner Senses", and of course, Hollywood's "Ghost". This is the reason why I mentioned it's great for those who are new to movies and the reason why for kids is the logic and concept of the movie is totally out !!(see SPOILERS). Another major flaw if this movie is the dialogue. Just like his previous Chat Gim, TH is not sure of the dialogue. There are too many times dialogue changed and dubbing has been used, making the scenes very unnatural. Most obvious are the opening scenes in this movie. At the end we a get a movie which is a mix of romance, mystery, horror & thriller. As usual in all Tsui Hark's movie, we get some messages that is irrelevant to the story and in this case laughable(see SPOILERS). The only thing worth seeing is the deep ocean idea but matured audience have seen it in "The Deep". The result is like a salad dish with too many types vegetables(mostly stale), served with Japanese sauce, on a Chinese porcelain bowl. Will you like it ?
***WARNING:SPOILERS***(Read only if you are sure you will not watch it)
1)Nearly all the ghostly scenes are copied from Eye 1 & Eye 2 - 4 scenes in a row of 2 minutes here - Ghost behind Angelica in elevator, hungry ghost eating at a restaurant, lonely ghost in bedroom, ghost coming down from ceiling. 2)This is supposed to be a mystery thriller but Hark throw in a GHOSTLY part which turned out to be totally the character's imagination. For such a concept which is overused in Asian movies, I am sure many better ideas for subplots but don't understand why yet so many mistakes. The first ghostly scene where the funeral caretakers carrying the ghost is out-of -logic. It's a scene not seen by the character and in fact many more.So such scenes should not appear. 3)Angelica Lee's character and idea is directly out of Leslie Cheung in "Inner Senses". 4)Just too many "coincidental" happenings to tie up the loose ends to end the story. Most obvious being the sister "accidently" left the camcorder in someone else' house, placed it on a shelf such that it "accidentally" shakes to drop the recorder when she closed the door. The tape dropped out. Look, it's a high class condo, how could the other wall shakes ? She came back for it but 3rd "accidentally" the person(1 out of 4) who knew where it was placed must be "coincidently" just out for lunch. My maths told me for this whole incident to happen, the chance is 1 out of over a million, in fact, impossible. 5) The love story part is of course, "Ghost" 6) The humanity part is out of "Re-Cycle". 7) The ending message on "environmental safeguarding" which has nothing to do with the story is a big joke !!
***WARNING:SPOILERS***(Read only if you are sure you will not watch it)
1)Nearly all the ghostly scenes are copied from Eye 1 & Eye 2 - 4 scenes in a row of 2 minutes here - Ghost behind Angelica in elevator, hungry ghost eating at a restaurant, lonely ghost in bedroom, ghost coming down from ceiling. 2)This is supposed to be a mystery thriller but Hark throw in a GHOSTLY part which turned out to be totally the character's imagination. For such a concept which is overused in Asian movies, I am sure many better ideas for subplots but don't understand why yet so many mistakes. The first ghostly scene where the funeral caretakers carrying the ghost is out-of -logic. It's a scene not seen by the character and in fact many more.So such scenes should not appear. 3)Angelica Lee's character and idea is directly out of Leslie Cheung in "Inner Senses". 4)Just too many "coincidental" happenings to tie up the loose ends to end the story. Most obvious being the sister "accidently" left the camcorder in someone else' house, placed it on a shelf such that it "accidentally" shakes to drop the recorder when she closed the door. The tape dropped out. Look, it's a high class condo, how could the other wall shakes ? She came back for it but 3rd "accidentally" the person(1 out of 4) who knew where it was placed must be "coincidently" just out for lunch. My maths told me for this whole incident to happen, the chance is 1 out of over a million, in fact, impossible. 5) The love story part is of course, "Ghost" 6) The humanity part is out of "Re-Cycle". 7) The ending message on "environmental safeguarding" which has nothing to do with the story is a big joke !!