THE COLOR PURPLE (2023)**

Alice Walker's iconic novel of African American female endurance, THE COLOR PURPLE, has a new life as a movie-musical.  I cannot fault the look of the film, clearly inspired by Julie Dash's iconic DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST, nor its production values, cinematography, costumes, or performances.  Fantasia Barrino is deeply moving and convincing as the heroine, Celie - a woman we first meet as the victim of her father's sexual abuse. We watch her children abducted, her marriage to the equally abusive Mister (Colman Domingo), and late in life discovery of her sexuality and economic power.  By the end of the film she is a late middle-aged woman, with all of the physical change that that implies. She is framed by two other impressive performances. Taraji P Henson plays the renamed Shug Avery - the glamorous nightclub singer who has to reconcile with her faith and father. And Danielle Brooks plays Sofia - Celie's no-nonsense duaghter-in-law who is humbled by a racist white woman.  

Every individual element of this film is calculated to impress but I just could not get over the fact that it was a musical, and moreover that the music was not contemporary to the period in which the film is set (the first half of the twentieth century).  As a result, whenever the production design and performances pulled me into an emotional space, the anachronistic music pulled me right out.  It also didn't help that the director Blitz Bazawule chooses to have the actors lip synch to the ruthlessly studio clean soundtrack. Given that so many scenes are outdoors with the sounds of nature around, I feel this is really a film where it would have been of benefit to have the actors to sing live, as in Tom Hooper's LES MIS, or at least make the songs sound less airless and clean.

The upshot was that I never felt involved with the characters or their story and while I admired it theoretically I was not moved.  The original film made me cry, I felt keenly the humbling of Sofia, and the more discreet relationship between Celie and Margaret sizzled with sensuality. I didn't need the awkward intervention of anachronistic music. 

THE COLOR PURPLE is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 141 minutes. It was released in the US on Christmas Day 2023 and will be released in the UK on January 26th.

THE ARCHIES**

Zoya Akhtar's Indian adaptation of the Archie comics is a strange beast.  One assumes that these comics are aimed at kids, and apparently they were very popular in India in the sixties. But why then do we have a film that seems neither aimed at kids nor at adults?  On the one hand, we have pantomime villains and heroes and an entirely sexless love triangle. On the other hand, Akhtar is trying to say something about the unique position of the Anglo-Indian community in a post-Independence India. None of it hangs together.  The film might have been saved by wonderfully catchy songs, but the songs are trite and unmemorable with bizarrely statically shot dance sequences.  And as for the performances..... Much has been made of the fact that Zoya Akhtar (herself a "nepo baby") cast three scions of major Hollywood dynasties in lead roles. Archie himself is played by Agastya Nanda, grandson of Amitabh Bachchan, and his love interests are played by Suhana, daughter of Shah Rukh, Khan and Khushi, daughter of Bonny, Kapoor.  None of them can act (yet?) but if I had to rank them, Khushi seems to have the most talent, followed by Suhana then Agastya. Maybe it's just the thin characterisation giving them nothing to do.

So what is there to like about this film? I genuinely liked the prologue where we get the history of the Anglo-Indian community and something of their culture. This isn't something we ever see in mainstream Indian cinema.  I liked the production design and beautiful rendering of the interiors. I felt a sense of place in Riverdale and its central Green Park and independent stores, and peril that this would be demolished to make way for a mall. In other words, I liked the background, but not the plot or action.

THE ARCHIES has a running time of 141 minutes. It was released on Netflix last December.

WONKA****

So cards on the table. Gene Wilder is my Willy Wonka. I love that film. It remains perfection. Silly and fun and sinister and melancholy and everything wonderful and enchanting.* But I am pleased to report that Timothee Chalamet's musical origins story is charming and delightful, and if lacking the sinister melancholia, well he is just a young lad. 

This version of Roald Dahl's iconic character sees him as a young impoverished man, desperate to share his chocolate with the world so that he can feel close to his dead mother. (Okay it's not as creepy as that just sounded). But he is up against two interlocking groups of villains. First, Olivia Colman and Tom Davis are Wonka's evil landlords, straight out of Les Miserables, complete with an abandoned cute orphan girl called Noodle (Calah Lane). The second group of villains are the chocolate oligopoly who control the supply by bribing the local police chief (Keegan Michael Key) and cleric (Rowan Atkinson).  And in case you didn't think that was story line enough, we have a delicious cameo from a scene-stealing Hugh Grant as the original Oompa Loompa.

All of this makes for a complicated but never hard-to-follow adventure story set in a kind of fantasy Victorian mittel-europe that is sumptuous and wonderful in its production design. Chalamet is absolutely delightful as Wonka, Calah Lane adds empathy and earnestness as his sidekick Noodle, and all the adults are wonderfully cast. Of course, this is Hugh Grant's film. He is always better as villains and rogues, but his Oompa Loompa really does have some pathos to him too. Kudos to the writer-director behind PADDINGTON (Simon Farnaby and Paul King) for creating yet another warm-hearted but never schmaltzy family adventure. My only quibble is that the songs - from The Divine Comedy's Neil Hannon - are not as immediately catchy as those from the original film - something that is highlighted whenever they use one of those iconic vintage tunes. Nonetheless, I await the inevitable West End musical!

WONKA has a running time of 116 minutes and is rated PG. It is on global release. *Let's not even discuss the abomination that was the Johnny Depp version. 

DISENCHANTED*

DISENCHANTED is a joyless, tuneless mess of a sequel that may well put Amy Adams' career to bed. Think about it: when was the last time she was the leading lady in an actual hit?  But the real issue here isn't anyone's performance (although to be sure, no-one looks like they're having a good time).  The real issue is a messy,  overly-complex script that doesn't seem to know what it wants the film to be about. 

As the movie opens, we see our fairytale princess Giselle (Adams) now married to her Manhattan lawyer Robert (Patrick Dempsey).  They're both over-tired and stressed parenting a new baby daughter and a surly teenage Morgan (newcomer Gabriella Baldacchino). So, they move to suburbia and meet Maya Rudolph's Malvina - the oppressively perfect mean girl who seems to run the town. At this point we think the plot is going to be about Giselle coping with the reality after Happy Ever After, and dealing with a real-life villain.  

But no. To add a needless complication and magical Macguffin we have King Edward (James Marsden) and Queen Nancy (Idina Menzel) turn up with a magic wand that Giselle uses to turn her town into a fairytale, and herself into a wicked stepmother.  This totally unanchors the plot, which is now about which mean girl will win. By the end, I think the point the movie is trying to make is that Morgan has to accept Giselle as her real mum.  But all that stuff about middle-aged and middle-class ennui seems to have been forgotten, and Malvina is presumably still harrumphing around the town scaring all in sight.

There was nothing charming or funny or wonderful about this film. It felt joyless and directionless and cheap. The quality of the songwriting was particularly disappointing. I am awarding it a sole star for the only decent and mischievous number - where Giselle and Malvina debate who is the most wicked. The rest is disposable.

DISENCHANTED is rated PG and has a running time. It is on release on Disney+.

CYRANO**

 

French poet-playwright Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac has been adapted for screen since the dawn of the silent era - most notably with Steve Martin and Gerard Depardieu taking on the role of the tragic romantic hero.  In this adaptation by Erica Schmidt, from her own successful stage musical., the lead actor is Schmidt's husband and GAME OF THRONES' Peter Dinklage, playing Cyrano as a witty, articulate soldier who is crippled by self-doubt not because of the play's large nose but because of his dwarfism. Cyrano is in love with his childhood friend Roxanne (HALEY BENNETT), but fears she will reject him because of his appearance. So, when she falls for his handsome but inarticulate fellow soldier Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr - THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7), Cyrano offers to write Roxanne love letters on his behalf.

Matters take a grim turn when Roxanne is courted by the rich and predatory De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn - ROGUE ONE - in full pantomime villain mode), and Cyrano helps Roxanne and Christian marry in secret before the two soldiers are sent to war. 

The resulting film is spare and elegantly constructed but filmed in a maddeningly, almost GODFATHER II chiaroscuro which the pretentious director Joe Wright clearly feels is emblematic of hidden truths and deception.  Poor Ben Mendelsohn is not asked to give a performance of any depth and neither is Kelvin Harrison Jr. There is far more to Haley Bennett's passionate, smart and rebellious Roxanne, although she is made to be so perceptive and witty it's hard to believe she wouldn't a) rumble the ruse and b) love Cyrano for his intellect from the start. There's also something deeply uncomfortable for a modern audience seeing a young woman duped in this way, into a marriage with a man she cannot help but soon find out is not who she thought he was. 

And did I mention this was a musical? With bad music that has a kind of weird country rock feel that works against its setting, costumes and dour, po-faced mood?

The only two reasons to watch this film - and the two stars I have awarded it - are as follows: first, Peter Dinklage is charismatic and compelling and heart-breaking as Cyrano.  Second, there is a particularly good and deeply sad song by soldiers on the eve of battle.

CYRANO has a running time of 123 minutes and is rated PG-13. It is available to rent and own.

THE PROM

THE PROM is a ridiculous frothy neon-lit confection that perfectly fills our need for joy in this winter Covid lockdown. I know it's taken heat for a) not casting its original Broadway cast but upping the ante with big Hollywood stars and b) not casting an actual gay man but James Corden playing a very cliched camp gay man but I honestly do not care because the result is just wonderful! Meryl Streep and Corden are superb as an old down-on-their-luck, woefully un-self-aware couple of Broadway stars! Corden is just very good in this role! Despite their narcissism and delusion we root for them and their two friends - a similarly hapless chorus girl played by Nicole Kidman and a barman played by Andrew Rannells. 

This wonderfully kooky foursome cynically jump on a social media story about a teenage lesbian who isn't allowed to go to her homophobic small-town high school prom.  They swoop into town and lobby in her favour, but when the rest of the town cold shoulders her by not turning up, they throw her an inclusive prom of her very own. The dramatic tension comes from whether her girlfriend will come out, despite the fact that her mum (Kerry Washington) is homophobic; and whether James Corden's characters mum (Tracey Ullman) will finally accept him. But suffice to say that this all ends in a wonderful show-stopping tune with enough glitter and neon-light to banish the Covid blues.

This film is cheesy, predictable, progressive wishful thinking but damned if I didn't shed a happy tear by the end. Like SCHITT'S CREEK, this film shows us the world as it could be, and how joyous a thing it is to behold. 

THE PROM is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 130 minutes. It was released on Netflix on December 11th.

ALADDIN

I approached the live-action remake of ALADDIN with extreme cynicism. I didn't understand why you'd want to remake the perfection that was Robin Williams in the original animated version, and I had my doubts that mockney action director Guy Ritchie was the guy to do it.  But I have to admit that this film won me over within its first minutes and that by the end the I was a committed fan. It is, in essence, a very faithful adaptation with all the beloved songs from Alan Mencken; all the beloved characters; and even some of the set piece action and dance numbers recreated scene for scene.  But it does so much more in its delineation of character and acknowledgement of current political mores, and yet none of that feels clunky.

But let's start with what this film lives or dies on - the performance of Will Smith as the Genie.  I have to say that he is just wonderful - charismatic, effervescent, truly a warm and loveable figure.  Crucially, Smith makes the figure his own, rather than trying to ape the untouchable Williams, and I love that he gets his own love-story framing device. His genie is almost more human, more warm and more touching that Williams', and the film benefits from that.  Smith's Genie also doesn't dominate the film in the way that Williams' did and that's all to the benefit of the really impressive cast of actors playing the other roles.  I really liked Mena Massoud as Aladdin - he was charming, smart and I really rooted for him. But I felt he was outshone by Marwan Kenzari (MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS) as a superb Jafar - almost like an Edmund from Lear with a kind of demented logic to his scheming - a poor boy like Aladdin who resents that he doesn't live in a pure meritocracy where his smarts would be properly rewarded.  But most of all, I loved Naomi Scott (POWER RANGERS) as Jasmine.  She has strength and agency and her costumes, while stunning, aren't the cliched skimpy numbers from the original film. Mencken gives her a new song that shows her desire to be a just ruler and decide her own fate, and in this film Jasmine is not a damsel in distress but truly the protagonist to Jafar's antagonist.  I really rooted for Jasmine and Aladdin to get together, but even more I rooted for Jasmine to rule, and that's as it should be.

All of this lovely character work is situated inside a truly stunning production design that Guy Ritchie's kinetic camera-work shows off to its maximum. It turns out he really was the guy to direct this film and I really can't fault any of it. 

ALADDIN has a running time of 128 minutes and is rated PG-13. It was released earlier this year and is now available to rent and own.

FROZEN II

I walked into FROZEN II expected nothing more than a cynical shameless cash-in on the success of its predecessor.  I knew Disney wouldn't have the balls to give Elsa a gay love interest so it didn't seem as if the story had anywhere to go. But I have to say that all my cynicism was overturned. FROZEN II is a beautifully told, technically stunning, deeply moving film, and one of the best I've seen this year. What's more, having heard a post-film Q & A with director Jennifer Lee, I can happily report that none of the character evolutions have been organised to be safe or commercial - rather to be true to the much-beloved characters and how they might feel at this "second act of a Broadway play".   A classic example of this is with the storyline of Kristoff. As the movie opens, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff) is grappling with how to craft the perfect proposal for Princess Anna (Kristen Bell).  But the writers actually went so far as to create and screen test a version where Anna proposes to Kristoff. The objection wasn't conservative, but that after a movie's worth of his efforts, it felt mean not to let him do it.  Similarly, when it comes to Elsa (Idina Menzel), I'm no fool - of course Disney isn't going to let her be out gay. But Jennifer Lee did make the good point that she's not actually ready for any relationship yet, because she's still at a weird place.  If the first film was about Elsa learning to accept that she can't hide who she is and isolate herself, the second film is about her moving away from just being almost pathologically grateful to be accepted by Arundel, to being genuinely happy in her own environment.

So that's the basic story arc. I loved the way the writers put it.  We have Anna as a fairytale princess and Elsa as a mythic archetype.  And as in the first film, we have to have Anna pull Elsa back from a classic mythic tragic fate, but we also have to respect that each has their own world.  To come to this resolution, we need to allow them to explore their back story. Why doesn't Anna have magic powers? Why were their parents out in a storm on a ship? To find out, the sisters, Kristoff and Olaf head north from Arundel to explore an enchanted forest that contains a dam that stops Arundel being flooded.  In doing so, we get a beautiful story that lightly but earnestly essays the dangers of not respecting nature, and the difficulty of confronting a colonial exploitative past. At the emotional level, there's a beautiful story about not being ashamed to depend on others, and how people from very different backgrounds (indeed, genres!) can come together to balance each other out, without demanding conformity.

All of which sounds terribly profound and earnest, and it is. But it's all dressed up in the most wonderful comedy and musical numbers. Olaf the snowman has a show-stopping old fashioned musical number that had the little children laughing.  Kristoff gets a parody 80s rock ballad that had the adults crying with laughter.  And the big number of this piece - "Into The Unknown" is just as beautifully crafted and penetrating as anything in the first film. I laughed, I cried, and was transported into the most dazzlingly created autumnal world.  I simply cannot wait for FROZEN III!

FROZEN II has a running time of 105 minutes.  It goes on global release on November 22nd. 

SID & JUDY - BFI London Film Festival 2019

SID & JUDY is a masterfully edited and constructed documentary about the latter half of Judy Garland's career, as seen through the autobiography of her third husband Sid Luft.  He meets and marries her shortly after her ignominious sacking from MGM, addicted to pills, with a reputation of being unreliable.  So young to be seemingly on the scrapheap, Luft masterminds her return to the big screen in the Warner Brothers funded remake of A STAR IS BORN (reviewed here).  It's so iconic now that it's easy to forget that it was a financial failure, and Garland famously didn't win the Oscar for it.  The wonder of this film is to show us how talented Judy was, despite the fact that Luft continued to enable her with drugs.  The director, Stephen Kijak, contrasts the various versions of its most famous number - recorded multiple times over many months because Warners switched to Cinemascope mid-way through the shoot. You see Judy's stamina - her ability to hit her mark - but also her subtle versatility in performance. You also get to know and admire Sid's honesty and sardonic wit. He's scathing about his own willingness to enable her drug use to get the film done, and it's so sad to realise how much he really did love her, and try to get her off drugs. At his wits end, he pretends to leave her - she calls the press, and the lawyers tell him to take the way out - but he tells us they don't realise he's in love with her.

After the STAR flop, Luft reinvents Judy as a touring extravaganza, with sell-out shows in Carnegie Hall and the London Palladium and every great venue in between, and finally gets her the CBS TV show. But by this time, she's being manipulated and defrauded by her new agents, and Sid is cut out of her life.  The story continues through the highs and lows of her TV show to her death. Even then you feel Sid still loved her. You also feel the tragedy of her life - her scathing self-mockery, her anger, her desperation to be more than just Dorothy, or the Man That Got Away, or The Trolley Song, for people. I was truly chilled by the denouement.

That I should feel so completely invested in this documentary is down to the skill of the director in recreating her story in a way that felt so vivid and immersive. He cleverly intercuts TV and film footage from the time, so we hear a lot of Judy herself in interviews. But we also get a really superb set of  voice performances from Jon Hamm and Jennifer Jason Leigh as Sid and Judy respectively. Indeed, it's ironic that as Renee Zellweger is doing lots of PR for her new take on Judy, it's probably Jason Leigh who gets the closest to this brilliant, fragile, angry, funny, complicated woman.

SID & JUDY has a running time of 95 minutes. It will be shown on US TV on October 18th. It will play the BFI London Film Festival, but it does not yet have a commercial release date for the UK.

A STAR IS BORN (1954)

The second version of the 1954 is also my second favourite - but almost by average. Inside this sprawling 154 minute song and dance extravaganza there's a beautifully acted tragic drama of around 90 minutes of equal quality and perhaps greater satirical scorn than the 1937 original. James Mason as the alcoholic jaded star Norman Maine is just as tragic as Fredric March's original, and perhaps moreso - there's just something particular in the hang-dog way he carries himself in the iconic awards ceremony scene that's utterly heartbreaking.  This film also goes far further in satirising the Hollywood machine.  There's a scene in which Judy Garland is made over by the press department - told her face is all wrong - which must have cut very close to the bone for an actress who struggled with her self-image and weight and fed pills since she was a teenager to keep her weight in check. 

The problem is that surrounding all this drama are a handful of Judy Garland song-and-dance numbers. This is an interesting break with the original where we occasionally saw the renamed Vicky Lester act, but sort of took her breathtaking talent as read.  In this version, we are very much invited to indulge in the talent of Judy Garland playing herself.  the problem is that, for me at least, the numbers by Arlan and Gershwin just don't hold up.   "The Man That Got Away" remains an absolute heart-breaker of a torchsong but the other setpieces just aren't memorable. You watch one to remind yourself of just how good Garland is, but after that - well, I'm sorry to say I hit the fast forward button - especially during a 15 minute medley that finishes the first half of the film.

The result is a film that doesn't hold up as well as the original because the music and format date it - hold up the story we actually care about - and distract from the central tragedy of Norman Maine.  It's a film desperately in need of an edit and I am thoroughly unsurprised that the studio tried to hack it down, and that it proved a commercial flop on its initial release. That said, if you find the right scenes, does make an emotional impact, and hues very close to the original, with many lines transposed directly from one to the other.  James Mason deserved an Oscar.  

THE 1954 VERSION OF A STAR IS BORN HAS A RUNNING TIME OF 154 MINUTES. 

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN is a cheesy obvious heart-on-its-sleeve film that shouldn't work but doesn't. It's as if it were cynically designed to capture the feel-good empowerment of FROZEN's "Let It Go" and does so with its relentlessly politically correct casting and story and a parade of empowering catchy tunes. That the product has been carefully honed does not detract from its effectiveness. I for one was utterly wrapped up in the two love stories at the heart of the film - and the idea that true love, entrepreneurial skill and a lack of prejudice will ultimately triumph. 

That the film works owes much to the on-screen charisma of Hugh Jackman, in the lead role of PT Barnum - the man who invented the modern circus and freak show.  What's amazing about this story is that it manages to turn something quite exploitative into an act of liberation. Poor Michelle Williams has less to do as his faithful suffering wife. Indeed, it's Rebecca Ferguson as real life famous opera singer Jenny Lind who has the most powerful moment as the woman hopelessly in love with a married man.  And then for the younger demographic we have teen heartthrob Zac Efron and the multi-talented Zendaya as a mixed race couple.  

Kudos to first time director Michael Gracey for giving this film such energy and joie-de-vivre - to long time Christopher Nolan collaborator, production designer Nathan Crowley for giving the film such a beautiful, fantastical and romantic look. He gives the tired faded concept of the circus real glamour.  But most of all kudos to the composers Joseph Trapanese and John Debney for producing genuinely catchy and uplifting songs.  This is truly a warm-hearted, wonderful film!

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated PG. It is on global release. 

LA LA LAND - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 3

Here’s the thing. I love classic Hollywood musicals of the Ginger Rogers - Fred Astaire variety and I love classic tragic Hollywood romances like Casablanca. I even love jazz - and not the smooth jazz muzak that this movie decries but actual jazz. I also thought that Damian Chazelle’s WHIPLASH was by far the best movie I watched in 2015. I was one of the people in the Odeon Leicester Square who gave it a ten minute standing ovation at last year’s London Film Festival and then bounced into the afterparty in a wave of energy inspired by its audacious premise, breakneck pace, astounding acting and cinematography. So to say that I was looking forward to his next feature, LA LA LAND, was an understatement. As we entered the festival, LA LA LAND rolled into town on the adulation and plaudits received at Toronto and Festival Director Claire Stewart announced to the audience that this was the “hot ticket” of the festival.

But, dear reader, I hated LA LA LAND from its opening moments, and while my feelings toward it softened through its two hour run-time, I feel it is a deeply flawed, over-ambitious, uncontrolled, mis-conceived film. I am calling The Emperor’s New Clothes on the critical acclaim.

PREMIERE aka ONE NIGHT IN PARIS (1938)

ONE NIGHT IN PARIS is the British remake of the Austrian film PREMIERE.  Not only does it borrow that film's title, characters, plot and music, but it also uses shots straight from its negative!  After all, mounting big Busby Berkeley style show-numbers on such a lavish scale required efficiency. The play is set in a then-contemporary Parisian theatre on the opening night of a new musical play.  Judy Kelly stars as the star, Carmen Daviot (although the long shots of her singing, and indeed the voice, come from the original actress and a new English language singer respectively!).  As the movie opens, she's fending off the advances of the theatre producer who sacked the incumbent actress Lydia Lavalle (Joan Marion) to get her the part.  Carmen is also dealing with the jealousy o fher ex-lover and co-star Rene Nissen (Hugh Williams) - an actor who is promptly sacked by the producer and while stopping the jilted actress from shooting him, admits it would be no loss if she had. So, motives abound, and as the stage show gets into a big song-and-dance number set in a speakeasy, with shots fired, so the impresario is killed. Luckily for us, Inspector Bonnard (John Lodge) is in the audience, complete with a buffoonish Captain-Hastings-like side-kick, ready to solve the mystery.  The actors are interrogated as the show goes on, complete with a re-staging of the assassination during the interval.

The resulting film holds up well.  It looks handsome, the costumes are lavish, as are the song-and-dance numbers. Okay, it looks odd to see our leading lady in a long shot clearly mouthing lyrics in another language to the sound-track but other than that one is never brought out of the film. And if the mystery plot is solved in a rather convenient manner, there's some satisfaction in the tricks that bring about the final deduction, and fans of murder mystery will enjoy it. And despite the style of acting that can appear stilted to modern eyes, I discerned some genuine emotion in the lead actors and was emotionally engaged in knowing what happened next.

PREMIERE has a running time of 71 minutes and was rated A by the then British censor.

OFFICE aka DESIGN FOR LIVING - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Eleven

Here at the blog previously known as MOVIE REVIEWS FOR GREEDY CAPITALIST BASTARDS we greet every new film about our profession with bated breath and are usually disappointed.  MARGIN CALL is the only film that has truly depicted the reality of finance on the eve of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.  Sadly, Johnnie To's new 3D musical about Hong Kong high finance joins the long list of movies which, like that hack mess WALL STREET 2, have pretensions above their station.

This film has been adapted by legendary Hong Kong actress and writer Sylvia Chang from her stage play Design For Living.  But in bringing it to the screen this very much becomes a Johnnie To production. Which isn't to say it's full of bullets and action but that it is played on a scale and with a precision that is really impressive. To begin with, he's constructed a massive set that depicts the head quarters of the trading company at the heart of the film, but also the local bar where the office workers hang out, the apartments of the key players, and even the metro car that they come to work in.  There are no walls but lots of impressive neon structures and staircases complete with a giant clock in the centre.  Everyone can see everything and gossips about everyone, and yet there are secrets deep and dark.

Sadly, Johnnie To's stylish design and fluid camera can't detract from the  twin problems at the heart of this film. First of all, the musical numbers suck. The music is some kind of light rock-n-roll pastiche that you might hear in a hotel elevator and the singing not much better. There are no great melodies and no memorable lyrics, although I'm willing to concede that this might be down to an indifferent translator.  The lyrics merely describe the rather obvious and superficial emotions and plot rather than hinting at something more complex and profound.  And I have to say that this is true of the plot in general.

The basic idea is that Mr Ho (Chow Yun-Fat) owns a trading company that's run by CEO Madame Chang (Sylvia Chang).  She's sleeping with him but also flirting with CFO David, who's cooking the books with some stock market bets using the company balance sheet. Like all gamblers, he thinks he'll be able to sell out in time, but then the Global Financial Crisis happens and he can only sell at a loss. Meanwhile his deputy Sophie is wondering where the 2007 accounts are.  The second major plot is that Madame Chang has discovered that Mr Ho is going to stiff her out of her ownership rights when the company goes public and therefore its trying to broker a secret deal for a US cosmetics brand, despite its declining sales. And caught up in all this at the bottom rung is naive assistant Lee Xiang and the owner's daughter, masquerading as entry-level graduate, Kat. 

All of this plot machination is played entirely on the surface and with zero subtlety.  Mrs Chang and Mr Ho are big fat evil capitalist bastards, CFO David is a simple-minded stock trader, and every relationship is either a sleazy affair or a naive coup de foudre.  The corporate politics is lifted out of Dynasty or Dallas in the 1980s. There's no real interest in the character motivations. Everyone is caught up in consumer fetishism but why not investigate the insecurity that binds everyone to that? 

The resulting film looks great but sounds awful and quickly lost my interest despite its great pedigree. One to avoid.

OFFICE aka DESIGN FOR LIVING has a running time of 117 minutes.  The movie was released in China, Hong Kong and Singapore in September.