I never thought I'd say this,
Feb. 25th, 2002 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynbut I so did not have fun with last night's Jackie Chan movie, Project A.
This is not to be taken as a strike against Mr. Chan. It totally isn't. Well, it might be construed as such, because this time around he was the director, but - I really don't think it was his fault. Not nearly as much as other people's, anyway. Lemme see if I can explain...
Basic idea of the movie: it's Hong Kong, it's years and years ago when it was okay to wear monocles and muttonchops, and there's a pirate problem. The navy's trying to deal with this. There's street crime problems. The police are trying to deal with this. There's a budget problem. The police brass and the navy brass are making snotty remarks at each other over this. Jackie's in the Navy. Sammo Hung's a small-time operator who believes there are 'four kinds of people - 'rich, poor, police, and thieves' - and since he either fails to manage or doesn't want to be one of the first three, that leaves choice #4. Yuen Biao is - I *think* - a particularly unpleasant police inspector who eventually turns out to be cool after all. There's a lot of wrangling over who gets to do what, and there's rifles being illegally sold to the pirates, and in the end Much Pirate Ass gets kicked, largely by these three, who came up through opera school together. Sounds like a good combination, right?
Wrong. At least, when it's in the form available at Blockbuster.
See, the problem with the Blockbuster version of movies is that these versions are targeted at the mass-market American audience. They're mostly targeted at people who want to hear English dialogue and don't want to bother reading subtitles. If a dub exists of a movie, and a subtitled version exists as well, you're almost guaranteed to get the dub instead of the sub. Which in some cases isn't really a problem - the Jet Li movie Meltdown comes to mind, I don't think that was particularly harmed by the use of English dubbing - but in others... well. An amazing number of the voice actors in this movie had voices that sounded like adenoidal weasels, or something. It's hard, really really hard, to get into the movie when every third or fourth voice sounds like somebody who got rejected from The Simpsons. The dialogue itself was on the heavy-handed side - the translator rendered everyone's lines into perfectly grammatical English. This might've sounded okay if it was given to native speakers of English to use (as it did in the case of whoever did Yuen Biao's voiceover), but it didn't work very well when the lines were handed to Jackie. It's weird hearing him arguing with the man in charge of the consulate using lines that are clearly supposed to be pronounced by someone with a BBC Standard Received accent. It's even weirder hearing Jackie do his own lines in this fashion while arguing with Sammo Hung's character 'Fatty' - and realizing that whoever Fatty's voice is, it ain't Sammo. Not to mention that poor Sammo got some really clunky lines- "Well, you know... all of us big guys resemble each other". Combine this with a really lame soundtrack that seemed to concentrate on trying to sound like martial music no matter what was going on onscreen - not particularly spirited martial music either - not even particularly different martial music from scene to scene - and, well... even though I got to see Jackie climb a flagpole with his hands cuffed together around the pole, then jump into the third floor of a building, it wasn't worth it. Not even the scene where Jackie avoids an oncoming bicycle in a narrow alley by bracing both feet against the walls of the alley and standing up in such a manner that the bike shoots past under him helped. There weren't even any outtakes! At least the Annoying Girl that crops up in so many of his movies vanished early on.
I'm led to understand that the American DVD version of this movie is not the same as the American version released on VHS, let alone the original version. Apparently the VHS version included several scenes that made other stuff make more sense, like an intro for Sammo in a mah-jongg parlor instead of just poking his head out from behind some scenery for a second and a half before Jackie and Yuen Biao proceed to demonstrate why a smart criminal enterprise will eliminate their chandeliers in favour of indirect lighting. If that's the case I'll be happy to watch the movie again - but someone's got to do something about that horrible music. If it's available subtitled instead of dubbed, I'll be an even happier camper. Hell, I sat through Shaolin Soccer even though whoever dubbed it into Malay forgot to eliminate the Cantonese audio track, thanks to the magic of English subtitles. For Jackie I'll go through a lot, as long as the video producers at least make an effort to come out with the good stuff. This time... this time I don't think the DVD folks really tried.
Six and a half out of ten stars. It would have been five thanks to that god-awful music, which really was practically the same for absolutely everything, but it goes up a star because Annoying Girl vanished early on. Plus an extra half a star because we did get to see Jackie, Sammo, and Yuen Biao fight scores of pirates. Everything's better with pirates!
Today's pulp survival tip is #111: Unless the local authority figure is outright, demonstrably, undeniably evil, rather than merely selfish, foolish, misguided, or a jerk, take any opportunities that arise to save his or her life without unduly risking your own.
This is not to be taken as a strike against Mr. Chan. It totally isn't. Well, it might be construed as such, because this time around he was the director, but - I really don't think it was his fault. Not nearly as much as other people's, anyway. Lemme see if I can explain...
Basic idea of the movie: it's Hong Kong, it's years and years ago when it was okay to wear monocles and muttonchops, and there's a pirate problem. The navy's trying to deal with this. There's street crime problems. The police are trying to deal with this. There's a budget problem. The police brass and the navy brass are making snotty remarks at each other over this. Jackie's in the Navy. Sammo Hung's a small-time operator who believes there are 'four kinds of people - 'rich, poor, police, and thieves' - and since he either fails to manage or doesn't want to be one of the first three, that leaves choice #4. Yuen Biao is - I *think* - a particularly unpleasant police inspector who eventually turns out to be cool after all. There's a lot of wrangling over who gets to do what, and there's rifles being illegally sold to the pirates, and in the end Much Pirate Ass gets kicked, largely by these three, who came up through opera school together. Sounds like a good combination, right?
Wrong. At least, when it's in the form available at Blockbuster.
See, the problem with the Blockbuster version of movies is that these versions are targeted at the mass-market American audience. They're mostly targeted at people who want to hear English dialogue and don't want to bother reading subtitles. If a dub exists of a movie, and a subtitled version exists as well, you're almost guaranteed to get the dub instead of the sub. Which in some cases isn't really a problem - the Jet Li movie Meltdown comes to mind, I don't think that was particularly harmed by the use of English dubbing - but in others... well. An amazing number of the voice actors in this movie had voices that sounded like adenoidal weasels, or something. It's hard, really really hard, to get into the movie when every third or fourth voice sounds like somebody who got rejected from The Simpsons. The dialogue itself was on the heavy-handed side - the translator rendered everyone's lines into perfectly grammatical English. This might've sounded okay if it was given to native speakers of English to use (as it did in the case of whoever did Yuen Biao's voiceover), but it didn't work very well when the lines were handed to Jackie. It's weird hearing him arguing with the man in charge of the consulate using lines that are clearly supposed to be pronounced by someone with a BBC Standard Received accent. It's even weirder hearing Jackie do his own lines in this fashion while arguing with Sammo Hung's character 'Fatty' - and realizing that whoever Fatty's voice is, it ain't Sammo. Not to mention that poor Sammo got some really clunky lines- "Well, you know... all of us big guys resemble each other". Combine this with a really lame soundtrack that seemed to concentrate on trying to sound like martial music no matter what was going on onscreen - not particularly spirited martial music either - not even particularly different martial music from scene to scene - and, well... even though I got to see Jackie climb a flagpole with his hands cuffed together around the pole, then jump into the third floor of a building, it wasn't worth it. Not even the scene where Jackie avoids an oncoming bicycle in a narrow alley by bracing both feet against the walls of the alley and standing up in such a manner that the bike shoots past under him helped. There weren't even any outtakes! At least the Annoying Girl that crops up in so many of his movies vanished early on.
I'm led to understand that the American DVD version of this movie is not the same as the American version released on VHS, let alone the original version. Apparently the VHS version included several scenes that made other stuff make more sense, like an intro for Sammo in a mah-jongg parlor instead of just poking his head out from behind some scenery for a second and a half before Jackie and Yuen Biao proceed to demonstrate why a smart criminal enterprise will eliminate their chandeliers in favour of indirect lighting. If that's the case I'll be happy to watch the movie again - but someone's got to do something about that horrible music. If it's available subtitled instead of dubbed, I'll be an even happier camper. Hell, I sat through Shaolin Soccer even though whoever dubbed it into Malay forgot to eliminate the Cantonese audio track, thanks to the magic of English subtitles. For Jackie I'll go through a lot, as long as the video producers at least make an effort to come out with the good stuff. This time... this time I don't think the DVD folks really tried.
Six and a half out of ten stars. It would have been five thanks to that god-awful music, which really was practically the same for absolutely everything, but it goes up a star because Annoying Girl vanished early on. Plus an extra half a star because we did get to see Jackie, Sammo, and Yuen Biao fight scores of pirates. Everything's better with pirates!
Today's pulp survival tip is #111: Unless the local authority figure is outright, demonstrably, undeniably evil, rather than merely selfish, foolish, misguided, or a jerk, take any opportunities that arise to save his or her life without unduly risking your own.
