Love in the Buff (Chun giu yu chi ming)

A.K.A. Love in the Puff II A.K.A. Chun giu yu chi ming, A.K.A. Underworld: Awakening.  Ok, I fibbed.  The Love in a Puff II title was dropped before production.

Watching Love in the Buff, I pictured a writer who has seen every single one of Woody Allen’s romantic comedies, studied them thoroughly, took copious notes, but didn’t actually understand why they were funny or romantic.  Take, for instance, the opening in which a young woman has three consecutive boyfriends die before the credits roll.  That’s funny, right?  But after two minutes of allusions, the matter is dropped and never referred to again; I’m not even sure it’s the same woman when we get into the meat of the real story.  Wouldn’t it be funny if this were her particular phobia?  You could center minor would-be boyfriends around it.  The woman could even create her own mortality list and her friends could say things like, “but he’s UGLY.”  And she would respond, “yeah, but I just got his latest EKG.”  You could see her immediately dropping a guy trying to pick her up when she learns that while he’s the perfect man on paper, his parents both died young.  That’s funny stuff – Anna Faris would die to play that role.

Alas, this film went another way.  Jimmy (Shawn Yue) is a pretty average guy.  He’s cute, but he isn’t especially smart, handsome, or funny and his maturity borders on puerile.  His outstanding characteristic seems to be that women go out of their way to please him, and sometimes he almost reacts positively.  I counted six different scenes in which a woman feeds Jimmy.  And we watch him eat.  By himself.  And once he almost showed gratitude.  Thanks, movie.

Despite his shortcomings, Jimmy has managed to attract the beautiful Cherie (Miriam Yeung Chin Wah).  Then Jimmy goes to Beijing and leaves Cherie behind (her choice).  When Cherie’s career takes her to Beijing later on, we resume their romance even though both have different partners.  Partners who are better for them, btw.  This is the Woody Allen influence – I’m sure Love in the Buff is out to make a statement along lines of “love is love even if you ought to know better.”  Yeah, I guess so.  But could our hero be a little more likeable?  There’s only so far cute will go to alleviate his selfishness and two-timing scumbagginess.

Does Mandarin have a word for “scumbag”?   How about Cantonese?

There are certainly some nice bits of BuffLove, like the parade of Chinese celebrities who show up and have speaking roles, including Ekin Cheng and Linda Wong.  The celebrity stuff plays a little like when Cameron Diaz blows off Brett Favre in There’s Something About Mary.  And there’s an absolutely adorable meet cute between nothing players Ben (Xiaoming Huang) and Brenda (June Lam).  After discussing celebrities with Cherie, Brenda meets her blind date who is the spitting image of Tony Leung.  Ben and Brenda hit it off and scram before Cherie even returns to the table from the bathroom.

It was most difficult seeing decent guy Sam (Zheng Xu) treated as one treats your average garage sale toy.  Really?  You like that other guy?  Really?  Well, I don’t have to like Jimmy, or Love in the Buff.

Rated P for Pointless, 104 Minutes
D:  Ho-Cheung Pang
W:  Ho-Cheung Pang, Heiward Mak
Genre:  Caught in a bad romance
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film:  “Wouldn’t it be great if Woody Allen were Chinese.”
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film:   I’m sorry, who exactly would marry that guy?