Just Another Margin 大话天仙

All posters ²

Screenplay: 6.0

Acting: 7.0

Visual side: 8.0

Music: 7.0

Overall rating: 6.0

Su Jinglin (Betty Sun) is a beauty whose lute playing can bend anyone to her will. One day she angers her mistress with it, and the woman marries her off to the town's chief eyesore, Mao Dailong (Lam Suet). Upon learning of this, a local womanizer (Ronald Cheng) decides to get Jinglin at any cost, but Mao's half-brother Song (Ekin Cheng) has already fallen in love with the girl, though love for Su and affection for his brother are at war within him.

Jeff Lau's career has been full of ups and downs – he has never made outright trash, but he could easily follow a genuine timeless masterpiece with something thoroughly unremarkable. Thus, the brilliant A Chinese Odyssey duology was followed by the run-of-the-mill A Chinese Odyssey 2002, and his films of recent years in general, if you leave aside the unexpectedly funny comedy East Meets West (2011), have been mostly disappointing.

The absurdist parody wuxia comedy Just Another Pandora's Box (2010) was likewise nothing outstanding, and Just Another Margin does not set the world on fire either – another "New Year" comedy made for two markets at once, Hong Kong and the mainland. Despite a thoroughly convoluted and delightfully bonkers plot (you get fairies and aliens here), somehow you cannot shake the feeling that you have seen it all many times before. An ugly duckling with a heart of gold? Think Charlene Choi in A Chinese Legend (2005), also by Jeff Lau. Giant fantastical mechanisms? A fiery hello from Kung Fu Cyborg (2009). A hero who turns out to be a god in disguise? Well, of course, the aforementioned East Meets West is still fresh in the memory…

You cannot say the film has nothing to surprise you with and seems a collection of stale clichés – no, it never comes to that. At the same time, it is certainly not captivating either, and the jokes often feel laboured. At times you get the impression that the picture was made on a leftover basis, and that Lau himself was on autopilot, running on sheer professionalism. He took out his deck of trademark marked cards, shuffled it well and dealt without looking – the result is a film that seems new, yet you understand full well that for Lau it is not a step forward but marking time. And, by all appearances, a deliberate one – as if the director himself does not want to grow and develop, content with what he can do at the moment. Or as if he is afraid of making a wrong move.