Fei hap Siu bak lung

So here's the gist of it: Phoenix Black, a pretty young woman in China two hundred or so years ago, a one-dimensional victim of the director's need to rehash the silly-teen-girl-who-loves-to-shop jokes, inherits the powers of the White Dragon via simulated computer-download. Because she's in love with the Prince, she must fight to save him from the country's top assassin, a man named Chicken Feathers. She is aided by Gene, a young man with an impressive knowledge of modern forensics.

Throughout the course of the story, though, Phoenix finds out that Chicken Feathers is a decent man, and falls in love with him as well. Now she must learn where her loyalties lie and uncover the mystery of who hired Chicken Feathers to assassinate the Prince.

To be fair, if you can stomach the first twenty minutes of silicon-age silliness blending with feudal China affairs, and the last ten minutes of western-world make-me-puke-mega-happy-endings, then the rest of the show ain't so bad. Though the wire-fu is growing tiresome, the sword play is decent. The love story is slightly appreciable, though on the whole less than respectable.

Cecilia Cheung, who's always delightful to see does an admirable job of taking a lame role seriously, and she gets to play a character with two cool names: Phoenix Black and White Dragon, Jr. The other supporting characters are just silly. The conspiracy story is dumb and over-abused in Western cinema. The blind assassin with a pure heart story is even more over-abused in Eastern films. I would have hoped that something coming out of Hong Kong would have had more substance.

The worst of the film, though, is that the director tries to blend modern silliness akin to Leslie Nielsen's Mr. Magoo (actually, you could reference just about anything Nielsen has done for the last twenty years) with all the pageantry of Eastern period-piece films. What you end up with is computer download power transfers, and a débutante of ancient China playing ancient Chinese songs on a flute while acting like a rock star and stage diving.

Needless to say, the mixing just doesn't blend. People who honestly express the thought that this is a great movie only demonstrate their foolishness, and an all-too-frightening penchant for idiocy.

If you liked 'Cat and Mouse', this is a movie you're going to like. It is a great romantic comedy, where you inevitably fall in love with the characters. I enjoyed how they stepped it up a little with a touch of a different culture in it, but glad they didn't over do it. Cecilia Cheung is a funny woman with a lot of talent. I will watch movies that she's in, just because she's in them. She just seems so comfortable in the roles she plays, and humor seems to come easy to her. Her co-partner, who plays Chicken feathers, really brought his character out. I would like to watch more of his movies, because he played his role very well in this movie. He made quirky movements like a chicken, and a funky chicken at that, and was still quite charming and lovable. I don't know if people watch this because they are looking for action, but it is more of a romantic comedy with the bonus of action. The fighting style reminded me of the video game 'Mortal Combat', which I thought was pretty cool and can appreciate. I advise anyone watching this as a foreign film, to watch it with subtitles. Nothing beats hearing the tone of the real voices, and reading the subtitles is not difficult, but sometimes listening to voice-overs are. May I repeat...subtitles, subtitles, subtitles. I fear that some people did choose to have it sounded in English, which might have taken away from an otherwise good experience. This movie, and 'Cat and Mouse', are on my favorites list for romantic comedies.

I picked the DVD off the shelf with hopes of a Crouching Tiger/Hero/Flying Daggers experience..in fact, the DVD brief even makes a reference to this flick being in the same vein as House of Flying Daggers. Do not be fooled. The description given to this DVD on the case is misleading and will not aptly describe the movie whatsoever. With ancient Chinese musicians playing historical United States tunes on their flutes and references to McDonalds, this is nothing more than Mall Rats, Clueless and so much other teenage drivel pumped out by Hollywood studios wrapped in the beautiful costumes of the recent Chinese hits of late. The English dub is so fantastically painful that I found myself scrunching my eyes closed tighter than I thought possible. The plot does not suffer so much from the premise as it does from the horrible interactions of the characters who fill in the spaces between pointed scenes with American elementary school politics. Avoid this movie at all costs if you are looking for what is promised on the DVD description offered up by the distributor. Of course, if you are a 12 year old girl moving to china to go to school in a Chinese elementary school where all your peers will be imitating American culture learned from Saturday morning cartoons, then this is right up your alley.

What do you get if you take the uncomfortable teenage sense of humour of High School Musical and replace the music numbers with sword fights and martial arts choreography? Something very closely resembling The White Dragon, as it turns out.

And unfortunately this is not really a good thing. The very Western sense of humour clashes horribly with the Oriental aesthetic and ideals, making the whole experience more baffling and uncomfortable than funny or thought-provoking. More often than it feels more like a parody than an actual comedy, which I sense wasn't the intended goal of the film makers.

Aside from that, it's not even that good of a wuxia film. And not just because the immature jokes water the subject matter down, but because it lacks the grandeur and philosophy of a proper wuxia film. Again, more like a parody than a proper representation of its intended genre.

That's not to say that the actors are untalented or that the fight scenes are not fun to watch, but while it may look fine, it lacks soul and passion. Though admittedly this applies to most comedies nowadays, because it's so easy to gain cheap laughs by pandering to the lowest common denominator. In that regard this movie is no different from Hollywood's usual fare.

If you can stomach most comedies and would like to see one with a wuxia setting, then The White Dragon is worth checking out. But if you're looking for a traditional wuxia film or require some semblance of thought from your movies, then look elsewhere.

When I saw Cecilia Cheung for the first time in The Legend of Zu (2001), I was immediately struck (if not smitten) by her beauty, and I hurriedly started looking for her in other movies. After a bunch of modern-day dramas (slightly boring, truth be told), she's finally back in a fantasy martial arts epic, looking better than ever.

I was immensely thrilled to find White Dragon, and I was elated as I saw the first twenty minutes of it. There is so much cool action, so many great laughs; so much delightful entertainment.

The rest of the movie is not bad, but it slows down a great deal to focus on building up the love story. It has many of the same plot elements that other Asian movies of this type has; someone is blind (yet a superb kung fu master), the girl is betrothed to another but can't help falling in love with the hero (yes, just like in House of Flying Daggers), and the love story completely takes over the movie after about a half-hour opening of great action and comedy (the great 2002 comedy Chinese Odyssey had the exact same structure). This is a little disappointing; one would really have liked the action and comedy to be sustained throughout the movie.

However, it's still an uproariously entertaining, beautiful and funny movie, and the actors all do an amazing job.

8 out of 10.