The first time I saw Moulin Rouge!, I almost threw up. The word “frenetic” comes to mind. It was five-minutes in and the pace hadn’t yet stopped. SMASH CUT/SMASH CUT/SMASH CUT/smarmy observation/SMASH CUT.
The film needed to slow down. Luckily, for me, it did. And then the music came; turned out, I had a lovely time.
But what if the smash cut stuff never stopped? Well, that’s the question answered by Escape from the 21st Century, a film that starts very strong and very energetic, but chose energy over storytelling, and, ultimately ended in chaos … losing its audience long before that point.
Three high school-aged boys, Wang Zha (Ruoyun Zhang), Chengyong (Yang Song) and Pao Pao (Leon Lee) -or the younger versions of those actors- are partying like it’s 1999, cuz it is 1999. Actually, they were battling foes when all three fall into a lake filled with toxic waste granting them strange powers. As a result, whenever they sneeze, they travel twenty years into the future — which is a pretty funny gimmick, if I’m being honest.
For about a half-hour, this film works. Twenty years in the future, we see a fascist dystopia that all three boys would probably want to eliminate in advance if given a shot, except for the fact that there’s a girl involved: Yang Yi (Yanmanzi Zhu), the younger version of which has preferred group leader Chengyong, but the older version of which sticks to group nerd, Paopao.
This should be enough. More than enough in fact. There’s already more here than Back to the Future, plot-wise.
Oh, but it didn’t stop.
And it just kept getting worse and worse. By one hour in I couldn’t tell what to root for any longer, and 
by the 1:20 mark, I stopped caring altogether. This could have the Chinese Back to the Future and instead it comes off as something MST3K might dismiss for being too erratic. And this is all a shame because the premise and the initial elements aren’t bad; there is a winning film in here and Escape from the 21st Century didn’t find it.
A friend suggested to me that this was likely a graphic novelization brought to screen, but the novelization was told in eight parts and the producers only had money for one film, so they stuffed in everything. This is all just speculation; I have yet to discover any such source material. But that explanation feels right, because the energy and plot twists never ebbed or let the audience catch up. Whatever the decision here, this material as presented is better off in limited series form. I cannot guarantee better results, but if you give a brief recap before every episode, the audience might handle it better.
Three teenagers from Chinese badland
Suddenly find that their future is planned
For each time they sneeze
It presents, with ease
So now they’re forced to take a tougher stand
Not Rated, 98 Minutes
Director: Yang Li
Writer: Yang Li
Genre: Chaos in movie form
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The scriptwriter, I hope
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Anyone forced to explain what happened
