Murder by Death was a fun movie, huh? I’m thinking these guys should have remade that as it’s clearly what they were going for. Why else arrange a week-long summit of deliberately comic and even more deliberately disparate detectives? [I once played bass for Disparate Detectives, btw.]
Last time we looked, genius whiz kid Qin (Haoran Liu) and his idiot uncle Tang (Baoqiang Wang) got in over their heads in both comic and dramatic fashion chasing a murderer around Bangkok. This time, it’s way different; they’re in New York City. Detective Chinatown 2 noted quite correctly that Chinatowns exist in many locales and decided to open this one in the Chinatown of New York City with a special gathering of app heroes. Imagine if there were a convention for the “Legends of Farmville” and you understand what’s going on. Everyone in the room is a top player of a detective phone app game. We will just assume for the time being that these skills translate. I mean, the best Farmville players make the best farmers, right?
Mr. Chinatown here has managed to gather the best of Farmville –or whatever they call this detective game- and it looks far more like a circus than a serious gathering. It seems Mr. Chinatown’s nephew has been murdered and he doesn’t trust the po-po to solve-solve, so it literally becomes amateur hour in NYC. Sure, allow idiot uncle Tang to contaminate the crime scene; that is indeed the best way to get results.
If you’re following along, this film becomes a farce at exactly the moment the laity are invited to the crime scene. Before this time, you might have been able to call this film a drama … grisly murder, clues, suspects, danger, these all seem like dramatic elements, no? You’ll get over it. The film sure did.
Writer/director Chen Sicheng mixes genres like a 10-year-old child with as starter Chemistry set. We saw this in Detective Chinatown. He will even mix genres within a contained scene: for one thing, kid Qin is always serious while uncle Tang is always a fool. And when I say “fool,” I want you to picture vintage Jim Carrey because that’s where Baoqiang Wang is going whenever he grasps the tribal speaking token. It would work better had I not already seen this
act in the original.
American audience members over the age of forty with a reasonably thorough movie background will be able to spot the murderer almost instantly. This viewing reality is unintentionally funny and one of the reasons I’m not as down on this sequel as I could be – it’s pretty obvious the director has seen a fair number of American films.
Detective Chinatown 2 didn’t quite hit the high moments of its predecessor and I found it a tad racist. However, I did kind of enjoy the mystery and I like (Dr.) Qin, detective non-woman. If you could eliminate the goofy, I think I might enjoy this character by himself solving crimes. But, of course, goofy is why we’re here. Without Tang, most of the audience (especially astronauts) will have no way to entertain themselves. Maybe we can launch him to Moon Chinatown for Detective Chinatown 3.
Playing Big Apple tec is a risk-o
From Soho to Hell’s Kitchen disco
This goofy duo
Proves big in the show
I hope three is in San Francisco
Rated R, 121 Minutes
Director: Chen Sicheng
Writer: Chen Sicheng
Genre: Another Chinatown, another murder
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who bring up “Jim Carrey” when he subject of comic film arises
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The slapstick challenged
