The screenplay by Chow and eight other scribes is not wildly original, but keeps springing minor surprises and Chow’s patented smart-alecky dialogue. As with his other directorial works, notably “The God of Cookery” (1996) and “Kung Fu Hustle” (2004), Chow sneeringly pushes past the limits of decency and humanity in his ill treatment of his characters, suggesting an innate misanthropy that at times sits uncomfortably with his exuberant merrymaking and often black-and-white morality. Likewise, the longstanding misogynist streak in his work shows no signs of abating: Newcomer Jelly Lin joins a long line of gorgeous femmes like Karen Mok, Vicki Zhao and Shu Qi who are made to undergo repulsive image makeovers, then subjected to physical and mental abuse, though Lin’s performance proves winning enough to prevail over these obstacles.
Nostalgically harking back to Chow’s pioneering “mo lei tau” (nonsensical) comedic antics, the film begins with a tour of the “Museum of World Exotic Animals,” somewhere off the coast of Guangdong province — a dive that seems to have frozen in time with its grotesquely fake exhibits, including a “mermaid” that’s a dead ringer for a salted mackerel and a museum curator who rehearses a freak show in his bathtub. This may seem like a narrative non sequitur, but it does reinforce, albeit bizarrely, how badly the animal kingdom has been depleted.
