Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Is that what happens when pervy 30 year olds start talking about the Olsen girls and their impending 18th birthday?
Or is it a new film from Hong Kong? Let’s see...
Harry,
Re: Review of "The Twins Effect"
I'm sending you a review of the Hong Kong movie "The Twins Effect", starring Ekin Cheng ("A Man Called Hero") and the Twins (Charlene Choi and Gillian Chung). For those who don't know, the "twins" aren't actually twins, it's the name they go by as professional pop singers. I hear they're the biggest things to hit Hong Kong since SARS.
Below, find the review. It's short and filled with spoilers (which I'm assuming is what your readers want). A longer and spoiler-free review can be found at my website.
THE PREMISE:
It's 2046, and alien vampires (they're vampire bats from another planet!) have invaded Earth. A really badass vampire is currently seeking an ancient book that can spell doom for human evolution. (And no, the 2046 thing doesn't mean groovy futuristic landscapes or anything (everything looks like 2003). I think it has more to do with the movie's "end of the world" scenario.)
THE BREAKDOWN:
Top-billed Ekin Cheng is Reeve, a vampire killer in Hong Kong. As the movie opens, Reeve is fighting some Eurotrash vampires with his partner/lover. The partner/lover bites it, and Reeve swears never to love again. His new partner, Gypsy (Chung), arrives to team up with Reeve. She, incidentally, has a crush on him. Uh oh.
The other half of the "twins effect" is Helen (Choi), Reeve's sister, who lives with him. Helen knows martial arts, but isn't involve in the whole vampire killing thing. That is until much later, when Reeve gets captured by the King of Eurotrash vampires.
Mickey Hardt, who plays King Eurotrash, is actually the best thing about the movie. His lines are obviously dubbed, but the guy really exudes coolness. Too bad he only shows up in the last 30 minutes, as is the general rule with many Hong Kong action-comedies. They're usually two Acts - Act 1 is reserved for the slapstick comedy, and then Act 2 is all serious action, usually involving tragic endings and whatnot. It's so Hong Kong.
Edison Chen plays a vampire with royal blood, who is hiding out in Hong Kong with his girly manservant Anthony Wong (badly slumming here). The rest of Chen's family has been wiped out by the uber Eurotrash vampire, leaving Chen to safeguard the ancient book. Of course he's less worried about the book then getting into Helen's pants, who he meets-cute in a restaurant and falls head over heels for. Chen goes all goofy over Helen, leading him/her to do goofy things, which is so, er, goofy.
THE QUICK RECAP:
45 minutes of nonsense slapstick comedy is followed by the second vampire action (the first involved Cheng). The rest of the movie is about the girls teaming up to stop Mr. Eurotrash Vampire, who subsequently kills Wong (he's so girly that it doesn't take much anyway) and turns Cheng into a vampire (hey, it should help the guy develop some personality, no?). The girls team up, are forced to kill Cheng, and then gets all super-power and stuff to fight Mr. Eurotrash Vampire. After some gratuitous use of the Jesus Christ motif that's sure to piss off Christians, it's The End.
THE GOOD:
Special effects aren't bad, but they're at least 4 years behind their American counterpart. The SFX where the vampires turn into glowing charcoal ala "Blade" when they're killed is used sparingly here. Once in the beginning, then the rest is used at the end when the twins battle the Eurotrash vampires. And for some reason they also use that SFX in "Star Wars 1" where we see people falling down from a tall height via CGI quite a bit. The other good news is that both Choi and Chung are not too annoying; I mean, they do that pouting thing bad female actors in Hong Kong movies do a little too much, but they're not really that bad. At least the film was only 90 minutes long, and 5 minutes of that are end credits.
THE BAD:
Well, the girls may not be too annoying, and they're not really that bad, but they're still pretty bad actors (although I thought Chung was slightly better than Choi). And the SFX, although it's pretty decent, is still old hat. And worst of all, THE MUSIC. I swear to you, the filmmakers really drown this thing in music. You know how filmmakers give you the "appropriate" music whenever they feel that you, the idiot audience, might not "get" what they're going for? The music is meant to cue you, the idiot audience, into what you should be feeling at this point in the movie. So we get gothic music (for the vampire battles), cutesy music (for, you know, the cute moments), and the loony tunes music (for, you know, the loony tunes moments). It gets really REALLY annoying. Also, the music is so loud and so overwhelming that the filmmakers sometimes forget to add sound effects to a lot of the action scenes! So the result is this: Flat action scenes playing out to throbbing "exciting" music. Really, really irritating.
TIDBITS:
Producer Jackie Chan, as is usually the case when he produces these things, appears in two scenes. One is a comedy bit with Karen Mok. In the other he plays an ambo driver who fights a vampire and does one of his Buster Keaton impressions. Look, I really like Jackie, but this Buster Keaton stuff is really getting old. And here's a suggestion: Why not make Karen Mok and her "So Close" co-stars the stars of the movie instead of the twin girls?
IN SUMMATION:
This isn't a movie, it's a merchandising ploy. And the merchandise is the Twins girls.
Okay. Let me make a note. “Films to watch next time I’m tripping balls... THE TWINS EFFECT.” Got it. Thanks for the heads-up.
"Moriarty" out.
