I stumbled upon "Breakup Buddies" (aka "Xin hua lu fang") on the Asian movie section whilst browsing Netflix. I was not familiar with it, and after reading the synopsis I decided to watch the movie.
I had no idea what to expect here, so director Hao Ning had every opportunity to impress and entertain me here.
However, that was not to be. This turned out to be a very mediocre movie. First of all, the story was not all that captivating and just seemed that the topics in the movie were just shallowly perused. This was a shame, because there was so many ways the movie could have explored and ended up with a more entertaining final product.
The characters in the movie were one-dimensional, and could easily have been replaced by cardboard cut-outs. Yeah, there were very little to like or get attached to here. However, I must say that the performances of both Bo Huang (playing Geng Hao) and Zheng Xu (playing Hao Yi) were quite well, despite the fact that they had so little to work with.
The movie struggled to keep my interest many times, and I must admit that I ended up checking social media throughout the course of the movie. It was just such a bland and boring storyline that I gave up trying to get involved.
This is not a particularly outstanding movie in Chinese cinema, and I can't recommend that you actually take the time or effort to watch this. There are far better movies in the Chinese cinema that far outshines "Breakup Buddies".
