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I can’t comment on how the new Tsui Hark film, Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, plays with a Friday-night crowd; but in a near-empty multiplex at 10 AM on a Sunday, I found it to be great fun. Colorful, silly, and egregiously phony, it went down like a breakfast feast of Pop-Tarts, Fruity Pebbles, and about a half-dozen kinds of ice cream. It may not be as good as Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (but then, what is?)—the special effects are cruder here, and Mark Chao, in the title role, doesn’t hold a candle to Andy Lau. But Tsui’s will to entertain is as strong as ever, ditto the filmmaker’s relationship with his inner eight-year-old. Not since grade school have I laughed so hard at a piss-drinking joke. And, as in much of Tsui’s work, the frequent lapses in narrative logic feel less like the result of laziness than of an irrepressible enthusiasm. Like a child making up a story for his friends, Tsui will throw in all the best ideas that come to him, regardless of whether they fit. A parasite that turns people into monsters like the one from Creature From the Black Lagoon? A mad scientist with the arm of a gorilla? Why not!
Ben Sachs writes about moviegoing every Monday.
