Crappy Date is one of our seasonal Periodicals, temporarily standing in for Tuesday Terribles, created because of our love for Asian cinema and the fact that it’s February and March – the months of Valentine’s Day and White Day.
What we’ll do with Happy Date is recommend romantic films to NOT watch for your date. After all, we want to warn you what movies will make her not want to call you back.
Crappy Date will be slightly different from Tuesday Terribles, in that we will have fun with it and tell you why each film is a bad idea to watch for your date, and what you can expect out of making each selection.
So without further adieu, let’s get going! Have a Happy Valentine’s Day and White Day, everyone!
This week’s Crappy Date: My Sassy Boyfriend
My Sassy Boyfriend
Original Title: 我的野蠻男友
Country:Hong Kong
Language:Cantonese
Genres:Romance, Comedy,
Year:2003
Director:Wenders Li Tung-Chuen
Main Cast:Cheung Tat-Ming
Fennie Yuen Kit-Ying
Amanda Lee Wai-Man
Raymond Tso Wing-Lim
Trivia
- This is director Wenders Li’s first film in the director’s chair.
- This is also director Li’s final film in the director’s chair.
- Director Li went on to become a director of some pretty good films, such as The Warlords and Love in a Puff. Maybe he found his calling away from the director’s chair. (Thank the film gods)
- As deceiving as the title is, My Sassy Boyfriend has no relation to the epic 2001 Korean romantic comedy My Sassy Girl.
Story
Anxious and dressed in her gown on her wedding day, Fanny (Fennie Yuen) is at the wedding hall waiting for her fiancé, Fai (Cheung Tat-ming). However, he is nowhere to be found and is unable to be reached. Fanny and her friends think he might have been abducted by aliens, run off with another woman, or even possibly kidnapped. He eventually shows up, bloodied and beaten.
It turns out that he got hit by a tram on the way to the wedding hall.
The couple decide to postpone the wedding to rush Fai to the hospital. When he eventually gets released, Fanny decides to have a small surprise dinner to celebrate, inviting over a couple friends. When Fai returns home, they are all in for a shock. Who was once Fanny’s kind-hearted fiancé is now an obnoxious, self-centered, and rowdy asshole.
Fanny, her family, and friends are treated like something lower than garbage by this new Fai. However, Fanny sticks through it, remembering how kind he was and how in love they once were. She clings on to the idea that there has to be some explainable reason to Fai’s sudden change.
This is the man who she promised to spend the rest of her life with, after all.
The Date
If you first watched this film thinking that it had some relation to Korean romantic comedy My Sassy Girl, don’t worry; you probably weren’t the first.
First, let’s take a look at the title: My Sassy Boyfriend. It’s pretty hard to associate the word ‘sassy’ with a man, unless they’re dressed in drag or homosexual. If the title were to be more honest, it would’ve gone something like My Boyfriend is a Dick. All in all, the non-honest title makes one think that this film was trying to ride of the huge wave of success and attention started by My Sassy Girl.
Fai, the titular sassy boyfriend, doesn’t live up to his given adjective at all. What the character tries to pass off as sassiness ends up looking like attempted Adam Sandler-ish assholery without any of the humor.
Should this be the film you choose for your movie night, your date will be uncomfortable at how unbelievably dickish a male character can be without being funny. A man leaving the toilet with dirty toilet paper crumpled around the seat for his girlfriend to clean up hardly can squeeze a giggle out of anyone.
The comedy is so awkward (and hidden) that the film plays different sound effects to let you know when to laugh.
Your date might also start thinking that you downloaded some kind of amateur movie or student film project off of YouTube as well. The quality of the film is so low that many horror B-movies outclass it. Whoever did the sound editing must have forgotten to filter out background noise; it cuts in and out like the film was a home video taken by someone’s handycam.
If a film is centered around a lead character being a dick, it’s normal for that person to show some redeeming qualities throughout the story. It gives the audience a reason to cling on to that sliver of hope that the dick really is a good character on the inside. Given that My Sassy Boyfriend is a romantic comedy, those redeeming qualities should help justify the reason that the two leads should reconcile and inevitably be together.
It’s difficult to do that with Fai, who keeps up his assholery for a long, long time.
Though, as the formula goes, he does show his redeeming qualities in the end. However, they dip into just about every stereotype that Asian romantic films perpetuate. However, given that this film was released in 2003, it’s kind of hard to gauge if those stereotypes were as rampant back then as they are now.
Actually, I take that back. This film is guilty.
There can’t be a romantic comedy with no “romance” or “comedy”. There isn’t enough chemistry between the two leads to really feel a romantic connection, and comedy without making anyone laugh is like watching an annoying kid continuously say “Hey look at me!”
Watch this film…
…if you just want to say that you watched it and complain that it had nothing to do with, or even come close to comparing to My Sassy Girl.