Nu ren bu huai

It must have been crazy to brand this as Asia's answer to the wildly popular Sex in the City, because for all the star power in its female cast, whom besides Zhou Xun, I thought the rest had hung to the coattails of their more popular co-stars such as Stephen Chow and Jay Chou in order to give their cinematic career some needed boost. And what must Tsui Hark be thinking if he reckoned that he could get in touch with his inner feminine self to bring to an audience something about the modern women's psyche on relationships?

There's nothing fun nor sassy in the characters and the storyline here, and at best, it's a forgettable piece of drama that felt like a typical scatterbrain trying to figure everything, but getting down to achieving nothing. The film was schizophrenic on a lot of fronts, having bitten more than it can chew, and then couldn't decide if it preferred to spit or swallow (pardon the sexual connotations, which the movie is devoid of anyway). While some would have written off Tsui Hark as a has-been, I thought I still wanted to give him a chance even after the rather dismal Missing, and while one can applaud his bravery at attempting something fresh, you're likely to find yourself questioning just what has gotten into him, and whether he has totally lost the plot.

You can reminisce his glorious filmography past, but I think those days aren't going to come back anytime soon. There's absolutely nothing to like about this movie, and everything felt rather artificial with little heart. The last straw of course came when a scene toward the end was a blatant copy of The Bachelor, except that the roles were reversed. I felt that was a new low with Hark finding the need to parody others, highlighting a serious lack of ideas.

Zhou Xun plays Ou Fan Fan, aged 27 (yes it matters enough to be highlighted in the movie), who with her thick glasses, transforms herself from usual glamour puss to ultimate geek with Calamity Jane tendencies. Her inexplicable nervousness when touched by men, makes her all frigid, and Hark decides to make this condition very slapstick ridiculous. Yearning for a man long gone, and with her inability to attract new ones, she goes on a research experiment to design pheromone patches that can chemically induce the right man to be drawn toward her. Think of it as an airborne Love Potion No 9.

Kitty Zhang plays glamour puss Tang Lu, 31, who oozes so much sexuality, that men cower in her presence, and worship even her fart (OK, so I made the last point up, but you get the drift). Having no friends as she inevitably makes their boyfriends/husbands/fiancés ditch them for her, she's the alpha-feminist and successful career woman who's out to prove that she has more talent than the size of her boobs (OK, so I made it up again just to spice up an incredibly boring story). The perennial case of looks not an issue in the corporate world, though she has some really dogged tenacity in fishing out for profit making deals, such as Fan Fan's patches, setting them on a collision course as she blackmails the latter into a contract.

And to round up the trio of female lead characters, Kwai Lun Mei stars as a 19 year old internet novelist cum amateur boxer cum indie band lead vocalist wannabe, who has an imaginary Japanese boyfriend to boot. I suppose this is an unorthodox a character as you can get, and of the three, she probably has the least screen time given the distinct lack of know how on what to do with this character, given her hands in so many pies.

The trio share limited scenes together, and for the most parts felt like having three different short films glued together as one. Supporting characters such as the rocker played by Stephen Fung provide that degree of separation between the leading ladies, otherwise they only come together at a hospital scene toward the end, and had a lot more to do at a restaurant and a music festival. Between all the three ladies, only Zhou Xun's character undergo some sort of internal and physical transformation thanks to her experiments in getting her out of her shell, otherwise the other two look more like caricatures, especially Kitty Zhang's, though in a way much better than being a flower vase like in CJ7.

There isn't much to shout out about the movie, and given its run time of close to two hours, there are numerous moments where it actually could have been trimmed to save the audience from the unintended torture of watching how some supposedly female characters lead their contemporary love lives, but with a man, and Tsui Hark at that, at the helm that well, it becomes a misfire with nothing to show.

This stylish, vividly stunning film is about three women who couldn't be more different: Fanfan (Zhoe Xun) is an x ray technician who has "selective sclerosis", she can't touch a man. Her look reminds me of Josephine Siao, a HK actress from the 80's. The DVD blurb calls her homely. Despite the bowl haircut and big glasses, you know she's actually beautiful. As beautiful CEO Lu (Kitty Zhang)steals men left and right, seemingly unfulfilled in love. Tieling (Kwai Lun-mei) is a rock singer, the youngest of the three at 19 has a boyfriend "X", who is actually her imaginary boyfriend. How do these ladies meet? Fanfan develops pheromones by accident, and the to sexes are drawn to each other. I was reminded somewhat of "Sex And The City", a show I liked (I haven't seen the two films), but this is set in ultra modern Hong Kong and I think guys will like this film. It has some heart, goes a little crazy, and that is okay. Its not a great film and I doubt that was the goal. It does entertain, the characters are fun to watch (especially Zhoe Xun, you can barely take your eyes off her) and its a fun way to spend two hours. Don't expect profundity and I think you'll enjoy it.

Mark it down: "All About Women" (2008) is the single most entertaining Chinese romantic comedy in existence.

One might think that such a claim really doesn't say much considering the rather unexceptional output of quality rom coms from Hong Kong and Mainland China. "West Lake Moment" (2004) was probably the best up to this point, but there have been other entertaining titles such as "Good Times Bed Times" (2003), "Drink Drank Drunk" (2005), "Love Undercover" (2002), etc. Nevertheless, the Chinese are still far behind the Koreans, who have literally dominated the rom com genre during the 21st century.

Enter "All About Women", which knocks out the competition in a surprisingly effortless fashion that will have professional critics dumping in their Depends. Like most great Chinese films made after the year 2000, this one is destined to be trashed up and down the block while earning an IMDb average score well below the latest fad (which just so happens to be the endless line of big-budget Chinese historical epics that ape Hollywood with poor scriptwriting, zero energy, and overblown pretentiousness). So how – exactly – does "All About Women" accomplish such a high level of entertainment? Well, it uses the following strategy.

1. Kwai Lunmei plays a badass punk rocker/amateur boxer/internet novelist with an imaginary boyfriend; and 2. Zhou Xun plays an uptight doctor with selective full-body stiffness and a lifetime supply of pheromone-enhanced love potion.

Absolutely brilliant! Both actresses are amongst the most charismatic in the Eastern hemisphere, and the mere idea of having BOTH in the same film is a good one. Add to this the scheme of having both actresses play over-the-top roles, and the idea becomes – that's right – absolutely brilliant! The only possible way that this faultless strategy could fail is if the script was terrible. Most unexpectedly, this movie almost feels Japanese in its restrained quirkiness and use of creative scriptwriting. Despite the high octane wackiness that's packed into two full hours, it's difficult to think of one moment that doesn't succeed. That's quite an accomplishment for a Chinese movie of this kind, and with two awesome lead actresses eating up the camera, there's enough starlet firepower to make this the single best Chinese rom com in existence.

In other words, "All About Women" will garner a whole lot of bad ratings and furious reviews. Not because it's a bad film, but because it panders to moviegoers who purely and simply want to be ENTERTAINED. An unforgivable sin in these cinematic dark ages we currently live in, where most lemmings seem incapable of delineating between good popcorn entertainment and soulless garbage. How do you think "Red Cliff" (2008) earns so much acclaim? It's essentially a brainless film with subpar scriptwriting, exaggerated/forced dialogue, and lame action scenes; but its overblown reputation precedes it with such marketing force that 90% of the movie-going public decide to love it even before witnessing the opening title sequence. I tell you this, John Woo's return to Chinese film-making was enough to earn an IMDb average rating of 7.0 regardless of the essentially worthless byproduct that was actually made. In like manner, "The Warlords" was driven by coupling the testosterone of three of the most popular East Asian actors with the big-budget historical epic. This project didn't even qualify as a successful popcorn film, and it ends up winning a BEST PICTURE award. What a joke.

"All About Women" isn't graced with the same self-fulfilling prophecies, leaving it wholly underrated and under-appreciated. There are so many effective comedic set pieces within that it's almost beyond my understanding as to how someone could possibly hate this film. How can you not laugh at how Kwai screws up that live concert? I've never seen a scene quite like that. How can you not be entertained during that crazy wedding gown scene with Zhou? This is great stuff that arguably rises above simple brainlessness for no other reason than for it's impressive creativity that tosses lovable protagonists into dubious situations by using their character flaws and quirks in a variety of ways. Heck, the script for "All About Women" is qualitatively better than any Chinese historical epic in recent memory because it kept me engaged, amused, and on the edge of my seat for practically every minute of its running time.

Perhaps most viewers confuse "quality" with "pretention", but that still didn't stop me from going online and purchasing a DVD of this film within 10 minutes of watching it.