I could safely liken it to some of Tim Burton's films, if you really need an American equivalent to get a better idea of what you're in for. So basically what it comes down to is that it looks weird, feels weird, sounds weird, and that the weirdness is wonderful to experience. There's definitely something about the idea of a living man and a dead woman being in love-it's that darned Romeo & Juliet star-crossed lovers thing, again!-that stirs the romantic in me, so I found myself really rooting for Ning and SiuSeen's cause when they decided that the best way for them to be together was for them to be reincarnated and try to find one another on earth after their births.
Despite the formula, I found his antics charming, and only ended up liking his character more after I learned that director Tsui Hark provided all his grunts, snarls, and whimpers! What kid's flick would have been complete without her, after all? Apparently, kid vehicles in China work much as they do here, in that there was also a cute, anthropomorphic dog sidekick that would drop over or growl or bat his eyelashes comically whenever the situation demanded it.
Firstly, you've got your underdog who is dense as a rock, but ultimately a good guy, his love interest, who is kind of a retread of that old "bar girl with a heart of gold" character you'd see in old Western movies, three bumbling enemies who start out trying to destroy the underdog's ghost girlfriend but end up mainly fighting each other, and, of course, the vain villainess whose only goal in life (death?) is to hang on to her youth. Normally, I'd find that sort of thing appalling (hey, if the styles clash, they clash) but at the same time, the odd mixture seemed to work in a very surreal sense and heightened my dedication to the story, which, as it turns out, was about China, ghosts, and a bunch of mystical weirdness that really seemed to draw strength from its bizarre visual scizophrenia.Īnd then there was the story. I'm a huge fan of animation in all its forms, so when this piece began, I was bombarded by awkward, bulky CGI images playing as a background to the traditional 2-D approach to animation.
Having exhausted much of the anime and Far East categories, I decided to give this one a chance, even though I had looked over it dozens of times before. "I found this quirky little gem at a local video store that specializes in foreign, independent, and classic films.