Reviews & Ratings for
Hollywood Hong-Kong More at IMDbPro »Heung gong yau gok hor lei wood (original title)

5 out of 8 people found the following review useful:
Interesting plays with your senses, 9 July 2006

Author: archaicangel7 from United States

This film is very interesting, the characters may not be developed to a certain depth but thats the point of this film, the director is obviously trying to leave us with certain questions and we must find an answer to. However, the film does not leave you wanting to know more but its rather an experience. A sensory experience, I should say.

The film has bright colors that cannot help but to captivate your eye and if you listen closely the use of sound by the director is impressive, he plays with color and sound through out the film, so it feels like an experience with your senses rather than just watching a film with an obvious plot. This movie is great for anyone looking for something different and new.

However Chan's more plot developed films are The longest summer and Made in Hong Kong, the cinematography in these films is not great but the stories are incredible. Hope this helps.

1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Most misunderstood film about Hong Kong's future, 18 January 2011
Author: Gau Keung

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is one of the most misunderstood Hong Kong films. Some of the reviewers here got part of it right. The film does borrow heavily from the Monkey King Legend. The young pimp, for example, is referred to as the Monkey King several times within the film, and the Chu family members are a visual reference to the Pig King. At one point, the elder son of the Chu family was also called the Pig King. What is conspicuously absent here is the Tong Dynasty Monk. Therefore this movie is not a modern version of Journey to the West, but it is in fact an attempt to deal with the fate of the Hong Kong economy after the handover from Britain to China, using the well known characters of the familiar novel as metaphors.

The Monkey King is well known for his ability to morph into just about any being on earth. He represents the adaptable Hong Kong economy. One version of the Monkey King is the young pimp, who calls himself the little tiger, as in the tiger economies of Asia. Unfortunately for the tiger, who tried to succeed with his computer, he ended up smashing it instead. This is Fruit Chan's disdainful reference to Hong Kong's failed attempt in the 90's to base its economy on the computer industry. He calls that attempt "tiger head and snake tail," or a roaring start and a whimpering finish. The Monkey King nevertheless is not limited to one morph. As one scene shows, the phone book is full of people who have the same name as the young pimp, whose name can be translated as "strong will." The Monkey King can indeed change again if necessary. IOW, despite the failed attempt to turn Hong Kong into a high tech based economy, the Monkey King lives on.

However, the Monkey King does have a nemesis, and it is the five-finger mountain. The Monkey King was in fact imprisoned under the five-finger mountain for hundreds of years before he was freed to accompany the Tong Dynasty Monk on his journey to the West. In this movie, the five-finger mountain comes in the form of the 5 high rise buildings in Hollywood Plaza that tower over the shanty town. These 5 buildings also represent the building boom in Shanghai and this point is driven home when we found that the mainland prostitute Tung Tung (also known as Fong Fong and Hung Hung), who claims to be from Shanghai, resides in one of the units in the five-finger mountain. This is a snide reference to the National Anthem of China, Tung Fong Hung, or the "East is Red." The mainland prostitute therefore is here representing Shanghai and China, and she is seducing Hong Kong (and pretty soon the USA) with her cheap prices. In this film, Fruit Chan is really asking whether the fast growing Shanghai economy is going to be the nemesis to the Hong Kong economy. In fact, at one point, members of the Chu family were waving a white flag at the five fingered mountain. Is Hong Kong ready to surrender to Shanghai? And how is Hong Kong's economy actually doing after the handover? This is depicted in the film by the family pet of the Chu family. Her name is Queenie, and at one point she was lost. When she came back, she had writings on her body which resemble those made by the King of Kowloon, a well known delusional graffiti writing character in Hong Kong society. Fruit Chan therefore claims that the Hong Kong economy had lost direction after the handover, and it was as delusional as the King of Kowloon. In fact, Hong Kong did go through a mild recession since the handover. So, far from being an incomprehensible dark comedy, as some people called this, this movie is actually an attempt to examine Hong Kong's economic future.

The ending, despite its gruesome nature, does contain a note of optimism. It shows the Chu Family moving into a resettlement estate and it shows that one of those people who were victimized by the gangsters had adapted to life with his mismatched hands. After all, as Fruit Chan pointed out, the Monkey King is adaptable, and so is Hong Kong's economy. It will do fine even when fate deals it the wrong hand, figuratively and literally. The key to Hong Kong's future actually lies in its past. Hong Kong's people succeeded in their past when they relied on their professional and entrepreneurial skills, such as roasting pigs, and these skills may be the key to success in the Hong Kong economy of the future. As the film shows, the head of the Chu family is the only blackmail victim who had the money to pay.

2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Fruit Chan talks about H.K. again., 22 August 2009

Author: aliver86 from Taiwan

Before 1997 people in Mainland China think H.K. is a dream place. So after 1997 they go to H.K. to make money. As times go by when they can go to H.K. easily ,than they think about America dream. That's what Fruit Chan want to talk about. Tiger head snack tail in Chinese means beginning strong but finish weak,also symbolize the attitude of Chinese government take over H.K. after 1997. And left hand should not in right hand's place. Hollywood should not in H.K. Is H.K. should under Chinese government control?And the story is adapted the ancient Chinese novel Journey to the West.Sūn Wùkōng & Zhū Bājiè should have more magic power than the fairy.But in this movie they all played by the fairy and also show there weakness.

1 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
Weird, surrealistic and often more than a little wonderful, 22 December 2009

Author: ky_chong

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Fruit Chan is a kind of one-man show: he writes, directs and produces his own movies, and he has little regard for what the rest of Hong Kong cinema is churning out. His films can't be more different than those commercial comedies populated by cutesy pop-stars or the habitual genre movies that Hong Kong filmmakers excel in. "Hollywood Hong Kong" is something firmly in the line of Fruit Chan's filmography, meaning you get the kind of strange narrative twists you generally don't expect. But in this Fruit Chan universe everything is rich, weird, surrealistic and often more than a little wonderful. The closest equivalent I have for him is Wes Anderson in the US, but even Wes does not come near the odd narrative surprises that "Hollywood Hong Kong" serves up for the audience.

"Hollywood Hong Kong" is set in an old shanty town in Hong Kong where a rotund barbecue pork seller/butcher and his two equally over-sized children make barbecued pork for wet market buyers. Zhou Xun plays a pretty hooker from Shanghai, China, who encounters the younger brother and seduces the elder one. A neighboring young pimp who is equally infatuated with the hooker gets hooked too with the girl who has been advertising her services on the web. Even the older father, Mr Chu, becomes somewhat obsessed with the attractive, at first seemingly harmless, girl.

True to Fruit Chan tradition, another subplot is laced with black humor: a female, middle-aged doctor from mainland China wants to help Mr Chu's sow have babies, but not of piglets - she wants the sow to bear human fetuses, and she persuades the butcher to let her implant fetuses into the pig. Three-thirds into the movie, someone's arm gets chopped off, and the doctor sewn a wrong one back. Humor of this sort is riotous throughout "Hollywood Hong Kong", but it is of a very decidedly black kind, and makes the narrative more interesting for that.

Perhaps some people will question the meaning of the film. I'd like agree to some extent to one of the IMDb reviewers that this movie seems like an inverted "Journey to the West" where the evil spider spirit (Zhou Xun) appear to triumph over the other two characters, Monkey and Pigsy. But this reading may be too simplistic. Fruit Chan has imbued enough sympathy even for the Zhou Xun character, not to mention the pimp, the butcher and the butcher's sons. Another way to read it is to see it as Chan's commentary on the intrusion of mainland Chinese culture into Hong Kong. Fruit Chan is documenting something quite real (a large number of prostitutes working in HK now are from the mainland, and some are working quite unscrupulously). The copious amount of corpulent flesh is surely metaphoric for sex in a film where sex is very frankly addressed. I find it a little strange that some reviewers are actually finding this a "typical art-house movie". If they do their homework, they will realize Fruit Chan is an independent filmmaker but rarely "art-house" the way Tsai Ming-liang, Kieslowski or Fellini are.

8 out of 32 people found the following review useful:
Oscar-winning Hollywood it isn't, 12 February 2003

Author: Lester Mak (leekandham) from London, UK

Hollywood Hong Kong may have won several awards, but the question that lingers in my mind is why? It's a typical art-house movie, but there really isn't much that is outstanding at all.

The plot centres around a 'shanty-town' in the shadows of 'Hollywood', a housing estate in Hong Kong. A prostitute arrives in the town with desires to travel to America. Meanwhile, a barbecue pork seller struggles to make ends meet, and things get worse when the girl arrives, as she turns the lives of the him, his family and other residents upside down.

The plot is fairly simple and there's really not much to say about it. However, the film allows the viewer an insight into the lives of about half a dozen characters and does this well. But otherwise there is very little to shout about it.

Hollywood Hong Kong probably is a little special as not many art-house films originate there. But nonetheless, I feel this is one film that may be overrated.

One to watch if you're bored or looking for insight.

5 out of 31 people found the following review useful:
Blackmail and Roast Pork, 6 November 2005

Author: Bill-1035 from United Kingdom

The story concerns a family of extremely fat Hong Kong pork butchers, father and two sons, a young pimp who is trying to set up an internet call girl service and a beautiful young prostitute who blackmails the first two for a rich man we never meet. Along the way we are treated to escaped pigs being chased through narrow alleys, people being chased through narrow alleys, pigs being chopped up, people's hands being chopped off (and stitched back on to the wrong arms, sex, blackmail and general confusion.

This is not an art house movie. There is no pretence at art. The film is not character driven because none of the characters are on screen long enough for their personalities to be developed and consequently we can feel no sympathy for their plight. The social commentary is crude and obvious, the poor people do over the pigs while the rich people do over the poor people and take their money to boot and just to emphasise the point there are lots of shots contrasting the corrugated iron hovels of shanty town with posh apartment buildings soaring towards the sky.

This is the first Fruit Chan movie I've seen and it will almost certainly be the last. Unfortunately it is not quite bad enough to be one of those movies like 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' that keep you watching in awed fascination just to see what new depths it can plumb, this movie is just common or garden bad; bad with no distinguishing features.

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