Ai wo jiu pei wo kan dian ying

I happened to come across "Lovers & Movies" (aka "Ai wo jiu pei wo kan dian ying") by sheer random luck. But when I saw that Francis Ng and Simon Yam, two of the better actors of the Hong Kong cinema, were in the movie I stopped dead in my track and decided to sit down and watch it.

And now having seen it, I sit with a somewhat bland taste in my mouth. This movie wasn't particularly outstanding. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that it is a bad movie, not at all. It was just generic and mediocre.

I think it was the story that was the fault of the mediocrity and the direction of director Chanyang Niu. The director had quite simply set out to tell too much in the movie and failed to deliver on every part. As such, the individual love stories ended up being half-hearted, and the characters were steamrolled by not having enough time on the screen and kept from having any character development.

The entire cast did good jobs with their roles, despite being severely limited by the script and the director. Francis Ng, in particular, was the one who stood out from the rest of the cast. It seemed that Simon Yam was just running on autopilot throughout the entire movie, but of course he had limited material to work with.

"Lovers & Movies" is not the brightest moment of Chinese cinema history. But if you like Asian cinema, as I do, and you have nothing more important or pressing on the watch-list, take the hour and a half to watch it. If for nothing else, then for Francis Ng's performance.