Lan gun fu dou lan gun qi

Mr. and Mrs. Player is a film that really leaves me cold. I was rather surprised to see this sort of film coming out of Hong Kong, as most of the other films I'd seen from there were a lot higher quality. In so many ways, Mr. and Mrs. Player is an incredibly crappy film. The movie is almost like a porno film with all the nudity removed but all the innuendos and spicy jokes retained. Which begs you to wonder who would look for a comedy like this.

When the film begins, Carson talks to the audience about his life. He's pretty much what most would consider a sex addict and instead of being ashamed of this, he thinks all guys envy him and his long succession of quickies, and he sees himself as the ultimate player. However, eventually (and quite inexplicably), Carson falls for a veterinarian who comes up with a really contrived plan--that he should move in with her and her other nymphomaniac roommates and he should stay sex-free for 100 days. Why should they do this? Well, I really have no idea but Carson agrees to this. What follows are a long succession of titillating scenes where the girl and her roommates try to get Carson to break his promise. Where does all this go? Does it really matter?

The film is one long succession of penis jokes and crude scenes (such as him having his member in a cast after he's attacked by an irate girl's family and scenes where he walks around showing his ultra-enormous bulge in his pants). A few of these are funny, though you'll probably feel a bit embarrassed that you laughed at such humor. Most of it, however, looks like it was just clipped out of a third-rate porno film or skits thought up by 12 year-olds--such as when Carson and his friends show up to a party dressed as sex organs and orifices. Another serious problem is that in addition to being a raunchy comedy, it's supposed to be a romance...but there isn't a whole lot of romance in the film. The closest thing I saw to romantic was when Carson somehow was able to resist committing date rape when the lady he was with passed out drunk. How sweet.

The bottom line is that there are thousands and thousands of wonderful films out there waiting to be discovered and there is no conceivable reason to pick this one.

I stumbled upon the 2013 Hong Kong comedy "Mr. and Mrs. Player" (aka "Lan gun fu dou lan gun qi") late in 2019, and being a huge fan of the Hong Kong cinema, of course I managed to find the time to sit down and watch it.

Initially I was looking forward to watching because Chapman To was in it, as he is quite an underrated actor. And he does perform well in this movie, although it wasn't his best performance. I wasn't familiar with Chrissie Chau, but she actually performed quite well as well.

The storyline is fairly generic and archetypical for a romantic comedy. A player (Chapman To) falls for another player (Chrissie Chau), but she will only have him if he can go 100 days without sex. And of course a bunch of awkward and funny moments occur during his ordeal.

The movie turned out to be watchable enough for what it was, but it was fairly generic, and it didn't really break the archetypical boundaries of what you'd see in other romantic comedies. And that was a shame, because it limited the movie to a mediocre routine.

"Mr. and Mrs. Player" is a movie that you will watch once, and probably never again, as its storyline just doesn't have enough contents to it, plus the fact that it was actually just your average-run-of-the-mill romantic comedy.

My rating of the movie has to land on a very mediocre five out of ten stars.