Lost in Thailand: The Same Dish Served Twice

I did watch Lost on Journey (人在囧途) — last year, or the year before that… sometime around summer 2010, I think. Honestly it was a pretty easy watch: low-budget comedy, and the Xu Zheng / Wang Baoqiang pairing had its moments.

So then, so then, so then — this year we get Lost in Thailand (泰囧), supposedly the sequel. Plenty of people were saying they wanted to see it (mostly girls, ahem), but I still couldn’t work up the mood to go to a theater, so I shamelessly watched a pirated copy… same as with Lost on Journey.

How do I put it after finishing it… the script isn’t as good as Lost on Journey. Way too much stuff that exists purely to be funny. The specific style of humor is a bit like early Taiwanese films — the ones I’ve seen from director Chu Yin-ping, that sort.

Chinese movies have another weird habit: they insist on throwing in some uplift and emotional moment at the end, exactly like a Huang Hong sketch on the CCTV New Year’s Gala. The result is often neither fish nor fowl.

Anyway…

A new dish. First time you eat it, it feels fresh. Second time, it’s nostalgia. But a third and fourth time eating the same thing… you’ll probably want to throw up.

I like Xu Zheng and Huang Bo too… if the dish is different next time, I’ll go to the theater. Sorry, not this time…