Shanghai Blues

Funny in 1 hour and 43 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In Chinese and English versions with English subtitles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once you get adjusted to how silly it is, movie turns out to be delightful.

The kind of farce that is so bad it is almost good.

THE BARE FACTS HERE SEEM BIZARRE. tHIS IS A 1930's style screwball COMEDY AGAINST THE BCKGROUND OF THE FALL OF CHINA TO THE COMMUNISTS. FILMED IN HONG KONG, IT IS ALSO ON OBJECT LESSON FOR AMERICANS ON HOW MUCH AMERICAN FILMS ARE ADMIRED AROUND THE WORLD. ITS STYLE OF COMEDY IS ENTIRELY DERIVATIVE, USING EVERY CLICHE OF 1930'S Hollywood screwball COMEDIES YOU CAN IMAGINE. iTS SLAVISH IMITATIon IS WHAT IS SO CHARMING ABOUT IT. iTS ALSO A LOVE STORY, as most screwball comedies are.

A classic and classy play.

Tsui Hark without martial art and a heartfelt tribute to cosmopolitic China (be it Shanghai or HK...): in a way, the style reminds me of an Italian "White Telephone" comedy of the '30s, so let me keep it in a soft spot of my cine-mongery.

Tsui Hark's perfectly scaled neo-screwball romance that remembers the spirit of screwball lies more in the celebration of the optimistic, hardscrabble hope in people (with post-war China filling in for depression-era America) than any particular plot shenanigans. And the theme song will be stuck in your head forever.