Pop star Richie Jen (任賢齊) makes his foray into feature filmmaking with All You Need is Love (落跑吧愛情). Sadly, the romantic comedy that Jen co-directs and stars in, is a total clunker.
The story, set against the picturesque backdrop of Penghu and starring Taiwanese diva Shu Qi (舒淇), is pretty to look at. But this isn’t enough to save the film from being an empty melange of hackneyed cliches and pedestrian plots.
Jen plays the poor local boy, Wu, running a bed and breakfast in Penghu. Shu is the rich Chinese girl, Yeh Fenfen, who comes from China’s Shanxi Province to see the islet that her deceased parents always wanted to visit but never got the chance. The two get off on the wrong foot when they first meet, but gradually they overcome their differences and fall in love.
Photo courtesy of Hualien Media
Meanwhile, external conflicts put their new love on trial. One takes up the form of Fenfen’s wealthy uncle, who tries to tear the lovebirds apart by forcing Fenfen to marry her rich, handsome fiance who speaks in an American accent.
All You Need is Love tells a formulaic story, with a bunch of favorite movie sidekicks, such as Jiu Kong (九孔) and Ma Nien-hsien (馬念先), thrown in. It has everything that a Taiwan-China co-production is expected to have these days: big-name Taiwanese stars who can sell tickets in China and beautiful shots of Taiwanese scenery to promote tourism.
Penghu looks as spectacular as ever, and Jen and Shu look cute together. But one cannot shake off the feeling that the filmmakers were either too lazy or simply lacked the ability to make the overworked genre interesting.
The verdict? Even if you are home alone and bored on a Monday night, and All You Need is Love is the only thing on TV, turn it off and go find something else to do.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless