I had two flights on Emirates Airlines over the weekend, so since I was trapped in that uncomfortable metal box for almost 15 hours total, I decided to spend it studying. So I chose to watch the Cantonese in-flight entertainment and listen to Cantopop on the music station. September is Jacky Cheung month! And there was Sam Hui and Anita Mui as well! They also have an awesome Japanese selection as well, 15 hours wasn’t enough to listen to most of it. The movies I watched were both pretty bad though.
The first one was “Future X-Cops
” (未來警察 in Cantonese) starring Andy Lau. What a horrible film. The premise is like Terminator mixed with all the other Back-to-the-Future kind of films, except it’s all over the place and doesn’t even make much sense. Basically Andy’s wife gets killed in 2080 trying to foil an attempt on a Professor’s life. Afterwards he’s sent back in time to protect that Professor as a kid because the assassins have gone back to try and kill him. There are so many problems with the premise that I don’t even know where to start, but it’s all good because the story takes second place to the horrible, horrible effects, bad acting and lame attempts at comedy. I really like Andy Lau, but if he thinks this is a good movie he needs to retire, like, yesterday.
The second movie was called “Beauty on Duty
.” Clever name for a rather dumb movie. It’s a Hong Kong remake of Sandra Bullock’s “Miss Congeniality”, not exactly the best movie in the world to begin with. The writers decided to give it a mo lei tau spin, so it’s a silly, hokey hodgepodge of misadventures: electronic crocodiles, ‘Genetic Self-Control Disposition’, running around with a dead body, etc. That sort of thing. Eventually the bad guys are foiled with no loss of life and everything ends happily ever after. I suppose.
There was a third movie running called “Hot Summer Days”, but after the fail that was the first two, I decided to stick to music and napping instead. After all, learning a language isn’t about forcing yourself to do things you normally wouldn’t. It’s about having fun. Right?
