Slightly bewildering kid’s fantasy pic about a dysfunctional family (Dad, Step-Mom, Step-Son, Younger-Son) who can’t get past the past. The first-wife/ mother died (a suicide?) while the father was already involved with the wife-to-be, and now troublesome first-son has taken to running away. Brought home, he goes to war against Step-Mom, telling her how much he hates her and tearing the place up. Fine, now he’ll get thrown out! Meanwhile, crisis at the boy’s high school where Dad coaches, and a players’ mutiny has broken out over the team roster. Lose and the school gets demoted into a lower league. All handled in a wearying high-energy style (like a hyper-active live-action show on Nickelodeon or Disney Family) by director Teddy Chan who must drink a pail of coffee each morning. But the tone darkens once the kid meets a strange tramp chemist (??) who gives him an aging potion that turns him into . . . Andy Lau. (It’s always a good thing to turn into Andy Lau, but still . . . ) Suddenly grown, if not quite emotionally adult, he starts to see other sides to his problems, empathizing, even with Step-Mom, and flirting with the hot teacher he’s got a crush on. I got it! Hong Kong BIG, right? Well, not exactly, as the aging process can’t be turned off or turned around. He’ll be an old man in a couple of days, and dead before the credits roll. Yikes! (Bye- bye hyper-active kid’s tv; Hello Kurosawa’s IKIRU.) Fascinating, as East is East/West is West cultural guidepost; less so as film project.
DOUBLE-BILL: Might as well revisit BIG/’88 which is almost as strange if you bother to think about it. Especially the sex initiation storyline which, if uncomfortably thought thru, is technically statutory rape. And, if that’s not distasteful enough, imagine the situation with a gender reversal. Tom Hanks character swapped out for a girl who ‘gets big’ and giddily loses her virginity screwing a thirty-five year old office-mate. Delightful! Then recall that the co-writer & director aren’t clueless Hollywood guys, but clueless heavyweight Hollywood women.
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