OPINION is divided over just how bad Sister Act (Pearl, 9.30pm) is. New Yorker said 'it generates a few laughs'. The Guardian said it is 'a truly awful film, pretending to be audacious, but in fact pandering to every facile assumption in the book.' Sister Act stars Whoopi Goldberg in a habit, which is intended as a visual joke, but which like most of the jokes in Sister Act is puerile.
Ms Goldberg plays a Vegas lounge singer who, after witnessing a murder by her mobster boyfriend (a decently evil performance by Harvey Keitel), takes refuge in a convent. This is the cue for a series of cute, synthetic situations; Whoopi leads the convent choir to greatness, then takes two of the sisters on a car chase to Reno. Dame Maggie Smith is the Mother Superior.
If the box office is anything to judge by, and it ain't necessarily so, Sister Act is not the feeble dross it was labelled by critics. The public enjoyed it - so much so that it became the surprise hit of 1992, ranking fourth for the year. It was good enough, or at least successful enough, to inspire a sequel, Sister Act 2. JOHN Lone, raised by foster parents in Hong Kong before entering an opera school in Beijing, said after he made Shanghai 1920 (World, 9.30pm) that he refused to prolong the Western stereotype about Asia. 'I want to be respected as an actor, and not just play an Asian.' Shanghai 1920, a melodrama directed by Hong Konger Leong Po-chih and set in Shanghai in 1920 (as the title so cleverly suggests), almost drowns under the weight of stereotypes. The hero falls in love with an inscrutable maiden named Mei; he crosses swords with a gangster named Pao; Mei receives unwanted attention from triads. If Shanghai had a decent harbour there would be junks sailing through it, their sails silhouetted against the sunset. I would rather the girl had been called Lotus Flower, but you can't have everything.
Lone plays the enigmatic Fong, who befriends an American (Adrian Pasdar). We meet the two as boys in 1911, then the action jumps a quarter of a century to the eve of the Japanese invasion. This time-leap leaves a gaping hole, on the edge of which the film totters uncertainly; the story is told in flashback, but the opening and closing scenes never quite connect.
This would not be so bad if Shanghai 1920 were historically interesting. It is not. It fails to create the atmosphere of the great metropolis during its heyday. The film was given its world premier in Hong Kong in 1991, but had no impact elsewhere - despite Lone's claims as shooting finished that: 'I am an artist. In my life as well as my work.' THE deathly psycho thriller (the producer's words, not mine) Where Sleeping Dogs Lie (Pearl, 12.50am) stars Sharon Stone, she of the removable knickers fame. It is set in the heart of Hollywood and concerns a young man's descent towards madness when he discovers that his lodger is a killer.
More than that no one - not even Pearl - knows anything. The movie was made before Sharon Stone became a force to be reckoned with and never got to see the light of day. It has been hastily re-issued on video to cash in on her ample popularity.