Vulgaria follows the misadventures of a film producer To Wai-cheung (Chapman To) attempting to get a movie made.The film itself starts out fairly well but flounders as it continues partially due to its leading man, partially due to its wavering tone with these semi-serious moments ill-fitting to the irreverent style of the overall film, and because Ronald Cheng is only in three scenes in the film with two of those scenes being rather brief. His first scene comes as our producer To goes about seeking a Chinese mainland investor to fund his film, unfortunately the man is Tyranosaurus a member of the Triad. Not unfortunately for us though as Cheng is incredibly entertaining in the role offering the flamboyance fitting to the man's name and his over the top manner of dress. Cheng is clearly having a blast but he lets us in on the fun as Tyranosaurus begins as the most gracious of hosts towards To offering him all the strange meats he could dream of. Cheng brings the proper ridiculous swagger to the role of such a gangster who is interested in making a most peculiar film, as everything he does is rather overt though importantly most hilarious. Cheng makes it go even further though in that there is a certain menace in this humor.
That is particularly in the way Cheng depicts the ease in which Tyranosaurus brandishes his gun. He plays it all just as a rather casual thing for the crazy man. Unfortunately for To, Tyranosaurus is easily offended and if one does not eat one of his stomach turning dishes they must commit a bit of bestiality. Now that is most absurd and Cheng's performance brings the best out of it by the conviction he brings in his delivery of the man's madness. Unfortunately Cheng disappears after the sudden conclusion of that scene, to avoid the actual depiction of bestiality, and we are not graced with his presence again until basically the finale of the film. Thankfully we are given a bit more of him as Cheng continues to derive some comic gold from the material in his portraying such intense disgust at not getting the film he wanted, then later just pure unabashed sleaze as the man takes far too many liberties with one of the actresses at the premiere. Cheng goes all in and is such a delight in this approach. Now here's a film where just about everybody is going over the top. The film would have benefited from a true straight man since Chapman To does a bit too much clowning for his own good. The film also needed a few more comedic performances that worked, but at least there's Ronald Cheng who absolutely succeeds. He's such a fun bit of insanity in his 10 minutes or less of screentime, and I wish the film had given us more of him.
0 comments:
Post a Comment