Help !!! DVD

Hong Kong Movie

Comedy Drama

 89 Minutes

Multi-Lingual

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辣手回春

Director: Wai Ka Fai

Starring: Cecilia Cheung, Ekin Cheng, Jordan Chan

This film is a dark comedy that deals with the bureaucracy that doctors must deal with to perform the simplest tasks in order to help their patients.
 

Yan a new young doctor is tired of seeing the terrible state of the hospital where she works. It seems the doctors don't care about the people anymore and she wants it to change. She convinces Jim another doctor to go back to his old way where he tried really hard to make a difference. They go and find Joe who left working at the hospital because of all the bad management and they manage to convince him to come back to the hospital. Together they try hard to get everyone to change their slack ways and get back to caring for the patients.

Dark comedies sound easy on paper but are deceivingly difficult to pull off. There has to be a certain amount of anger behind the comedy; if the audience does not sense the filmmakers' outrage, then the inevitable over-the-top humor is left stranded without a context. That being said, this film did a pretty good job at pulling it off, although the anger expressed in the film towards the medical establishment is a bit too general and lacks the intense bite that would have been present had it been more specific.

That being said, It's hard to be too critical of a film that wears its lightweight intentions on its sleeve. Slapstick, after all, is not meant to be taken seriously, and Help!!! wants to please. On this score, the fast and frenetic visuals keep things moving along, and the large cast pops on and off the screen with such alacrity that it's difficult to find time to become bored. The performers seem adequate to the task.

The scale and budget of this film was large, and translated into stunning visuals, photography and special effects. This film definitely has a Hollywood feel to it, but retains essential qualities that makes HK films unique.

DVD: List Price: US $21.95

Sale Price: US$8.95

Language: Cantonese / Mandarin

Subtitle: English / Traditional Chinese / Simplified Chinese

All Regions (Can be played on any DVD player in the world)

Letter Box

Rating: IIB - "Adult Material; Parental Guidance Recommended" (roughly equal to an MPPA rating of "R") Films rated Category IIB contain large amounts of violence and/or nudity and sexual situations in addition to possible explicit language and adult situations.