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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: Chase Our Love

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Story

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Meet the Single Best Girls, led by the sexy Jing Jing (Gan Ting-Ting, oh my) whose members online the popular online role playing game Expedition. Every girl is gorgeous and high-class, with looks that boys would fall head over heels for. Except, none of them can find lovers, and they are all in fear of not being able to marry. They come to a realization that the qualities they seek in a partner are found in the male players of their online game – the geeks.

Enter the Alliance of the Geeks, led by Zai Zai (Wong Yau-Nam), aka “Little Boy”. They are a band of brothers who play Expedition alongside the Single Best Girls.

Both groups, each with thousands of members, are both headed into futures in which they are doomed to stay single. While the girls live in fear of it, the boys embrace it, refusing to abandon their bros and their precious lives absent of the burden of women. The Single Best Girls, each member desperate to find the man of their dreams, declare war on the Alliance of the Geeks, proclaiming they will bring the boys out of the confines of their bedrooms and into the warm embrace of romance.

In order to topple the Alliance, they must first find Little Boy whose identity remains unknown to the girls.

As the girls fight for their right for dates and the boys stay adamant on living their single lives, the winner will be seen standing as the dust clears on this battle of the sexes.

The Date

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There’s nothing wrong with story about the battle of the sexes. It can prove to be entertaining, especially in a set up like Chase Our Love, which depicts the super hot girls against the geek, or otaku as many of us like to call them.

However, the premise is a little too far-fetched; it’s hard to believe the conflict at all.

First of all, it’s hard to believe that girls who look like they spend their days shopping at Chanel would be interested in trying to hook up with guys they meet in an online game.

Second, it’s even harder to believe in the existence of guys, even geeks, who would try to oppose that action. No guy in the world would ever turn down free hanky panky, especially from girls like these.

If you choose to watch this for your movie night, you and your date will be in a state of constant confusion, asking questions such as “Wait, why are guys playing hard to get?” and “Why are they even quarreling in the first place?”

The “conflict” has even gone as far as sides recruiting double agents, each whose individual intentions remain unclear. As a matter of fact, a lot of the motives remain unclear, and a lot of the “sabotaging” and “attacks” will make any viewer confused as to how exactly either side is going about to topple the other. All we see is a lot of confrontations, with boys on the left and girls on the right, and words of challenge being voiced by both.

The world-building is near non-existent, namely the clashing of the hot girl world and the geek world. There are very little references to the online game that one would think to be the center of the battle (that’s why one group calls themselves “geeks” after all) other than a few mentions scattered throughout the film. The otaku premise becomes quickly forgen and we are left with a story about hot girls and guys who pretend they don’t want it.

Of course, as a romance story must, love must bloom from somewhere. The story focuses on three couples: Little Boy and Jing Jing, the leaders of their respective groups who meet by coincidence but are unknowing of each other’s identity (how about that dues ex machina); Geezer (Kenny Bee), an elderly gentleman who faints whenever he touches a girl, and young fashion designer Minnie (Zhang Xinyu), the only girl who doesn’t make him faint but unfortunately has terminal cancer (DUN DUN DUN!); and Hwa (Ye Jing), a double agent who isn’t really clear about whose side he’s really on, and his contact Liu Ting (Zhao Ke), who refuses all his smitten advances (wait, shouldn’t it be the other way around?).

There is a fourth love story in the form of hottie Stephy Tang, the Goddess of the Geeks (the cosplaying spokesperson for the online game), and He Jiong, a fling from a relationship years prior. Their relationship is only touched upon only a couple times in the entire film, making one question why it deserved any mention in the first place.

The cluster of characters really prevents the audience from attaching and connecting to any side, especially when you have bewildering side plots that divert from the already nonsensical story. Somewhere in the timeline, we stop caring about who hooks up with who and really only start caring about how hot the actors and actresses are.

The absence of a deep plot and believable romance will make your date question if you really wanted to watch a film, or if you just wanted to see armies of long legs march to battle.

In the end, what we can learn from this film is that it’s possible for high-class girls to want some otaku lovin’.

At least that’s what we hope to be true.

Watch this film…

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…if you can find satisfaction solely by watching hot actresses open their mouths.