Tweekums In Ming Dynasty China two pairs of siblings are strangely destined to be together; one the emperor and his sister, Wushuang, and the other Phoenix, a restaurant owner, and her wayward brother, Li Yilong AKA King Bully. The princess escapes, dressed as a man, and finds herself befriended by Li Yilong who is trying to find a nice man for his sister to marry. While he is trying to get Wushuang interested in his sister it is clear that she is actually falling for him; she even tells him she is a woman but he thinks she is joking. While they are away the Emperor, travelling incognito, finds himself in the same town and befriends Phoenix! Over the course of the film there are many misunderstandings and even when Li Yilong finally learns that Wushuang really is a woman it looks as if they won't be able to get together as the dowager empress strongly disapproves of him.This comedy of misunderstandings manages to be funny at the same time as being quite silly. An example of the silliness is the magistrate's son who has an ear almost the size of his head! It is also hard to believe that anybody would mistake the beautiful Wushuang for a man whatever clothes she was wearing. If you aren't put off by such things this film is a lot of fun; the cast do a fine job; especially Tony Chiu Wai Leung who plays Li Yilong, Faye Wong who plays Princess Wushuang and Wei Zhao who plays Phoenix. There are some fight scenes although these too are played for laughs rather than excitement so there is no real sense of danger. Overall I'd say that this film was a lot of fun and is well worth watching although I suspect the silliness might put some viewers off.These comments are based on watching the film in Cantonese with English subtitles.

imdb-12346 I's not as is this film is truly bad, in fact just as you are about to give up and switch off something genuinely and originally funny happens. The main problem is that it is just that, a few jokes evenly spaced and just enough to keep you watching to the end but leaving a dissatisfied feeling that you could have watched something better in the same amount of time. The acting is passable and in some cases rises above average but again it's nothing special.Unfortunately the best word to describe the film is mediocre and with the addition of a paper thin plot to sustain it, it just doesn't match up to much better examples in the same genre and region.

lia00027 Wow funny story from Tony, Miss Wong, & Vicky. As usual Good acting from Tony and Miss Wong. But not good acting from Vicky, better her acting from "Pearl Princess" for me she just use her beauty not her acting.When see this movie I laugh, laugh, and laugh. It can lost my stress. Even the story is not made sense at all but it's fine because this movie is special for make fun.And maybe this is resurrection Hong Kong film with old story which is booming in 1990.

stuartmcd First up, anyone wanting to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style martial arts carry-on should look elsewhere. This film is a one of the increasingly perplexing (to Westerners just after kung fu) school of Hong Kong comedies known as 'mo lei tow' (nonsense) films.The basic feel of the movie is something akin to the Simpsons set in Ming dynasty China. Women pretend to be men, women fall in love with women pretending to be men, the women pretending to be men fall in love with the actual men, who are trying to fix them up with the women. It's a bit like a Shakespeare comedy, actually, with hilarious surreal flourishes.So that's all good. Tony Leung is great as the male lead, as always (he's the Hong Kong equivalent of Robert Redford or Paul Newman, though somewhat younger). Faye Wong is equally good as the female lead, and her singing is lovely. The best bit in the film is a scene where Leung and Wong get stuck in quicksand and try to persuade a goose to rescue them.Sadly, things go awry. Producer/director Wong Kar Wai is notorious (and critically lauded) for making arty, boring films (examples include the dreadful Ashes of Time, and In the Mood for Love), so I was pleasantly surprised that this film was so different. Alas, at the end, Wong tries to inject dramatic weight into proceedings to resolve the romantic tensions, and the action becomes a series of oblique internal monologues containing near-meaningless aphorisms (Wong's "forte"). Stumbling and choking under the weight of this nonsense (and not good, mo lei tow nonsense either), the film's conclusion is unnecessarily leaden and downbeat.Still, Chinese Odyssey _is_ a funny film, and even the downhillness at the end can be excused. For more genuine examples of mo lei tow cinema (ie, not contrived by an arthouse director selfconciously trying to make his mark on the genre), try Flying Daggers (1993) or Stephen Chow's Forbidden City Cop (1995). In fact, just watch any Stephen Chow film.