I didn't believe the guy in the DVD shop down the street when he recommended this "black comedy", I'm generally not a big fan of Chinese humor. But he assured me that this was the first film of its kind in China, and so I bought it in spite of my reservations. After watching Big Shot's Funeral I'm really glad that I gave it a chance.
This movie was so much funnier than i thought it would be! First of all, it stars one of the best comic actors out there, You Ge (YoYo). He's got the deadpan delivery down pat. Second, the whole scenario of Sutherland's character as a director staging a new version of The Last Emperor was hilarious, from the eroticized woman ostensibly giving birth, to the child actor drinking his cola - subversively funny commentary on Orientalism and commercialism. Then we get to watch as YoYo completely immerses himself in planning a ridiculously extravagant funeral for a guy who a) he barely knows, and b) isn't dead yet! Seriously, that's a great comic premise in any language.
My main complaint about this film is Rosamund Kwan's character (Lucy). She just didn't seem to fit, and about halfway through the film I started to get really annoyed with her as her actions didn't seem to make any sense at all.
Not that this movie is really supposed to make sense, it's just that in the farcical scheme of things Lucy seemed to kill all the fun. The other thing is that the last 10 or 15 minutes of the film didn't really work at all; it's almost like the director couldn't figure out how to wrap things up so he just threw together a bizarre collection of scenes without bothering to relate them to the rest of the film. But these kinds of problems aren't a big deal in a movie that's not to be taken seriously in the first place. I would especially recommend it to foreign viewers who are only used to stuff by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige; Big Shot's Funeral is a nice contrast to all those Very Serious movies set in the Very Distant past.
This movie was so much funnier than i thought it would be! First of all, it stars one of the best comic actors out there, You Ge (YoYo). He's got the deadpan delivery down pat. Second, the whole scenario of Sutherland's character as a director staging a new version of The Last Emperor was hilarious, from the eroticized woman ostensibly giving birth, to the child actor drinking his cola - subversively funny commentary on Orientalism and commercialism. Then we get to watch as YoYo completely immerses himself in planning a ridiculously extravagant funeral for a guy who a) he barely knows, and b) isn't dead yet! Seriously, that's a great comic premise in any language.
My main complaint about this film is Rosamund Kwan's character (Lucy). She just didn't seem to fit, and about halfway through the film I started to get really annoyed with her as her actions didn't seem to make any sense at all.
Not that this movie is really supposed to make sense, it's just that in the farcical scheme of things Lucy seemed to kill all the fun. The other thing is that the last 10 or 15 minutes of the film didn't really work at all; it's almost like the director couldn't figure out how to wrap things up so he just threw together a bizarre collection of scenes without bothering to relate them to the rest of the film. But these kinds of problems aren't a big deal in a movie that's not to be taken seriously in the first place. I would especially recommend it to foreign viewers who are only used to stuff by Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige; Big Shot's Funeral is a nice contrast to all those Very Serious movies set in the Very Distant past.