Review | A Choo movie review: saccharine puppy love story infused with superhero action fantasy finally gets released
- A Choo follows Kai Ko’s character as he tries to win the love of his childhood crush played by Ariel Lin Yi-chen, who is in love with a superhero
- The film is adapted from Giddens Ko’s 2004 novel of the same name, but don’t expect anything on the level of Ko’s 2011 hit You Are the Apple of My Eye
2.5/5 stars
A puppy love story receives the lavish fantasy treatment it didn’t deserve in A Choo, directors Peter Tsi ( Buddy Cops ) and Kevin Ko Meng-jung’s long-shelved adaptation of Giddens Ko Ching-teng’s 2004 novel. Reuniting the author with Kai Ko Chen-tung, the lead of his top-grossing filmmaking debut You Are the Apple of My Eye (2011), this is a bizarre hybrid of youth romance and superhero action.
Playing like a whimsical short story misguidedly stretched to feature length, the film follows young man EJ (Ko) as he tries to demonstrate his bravery and win the heart of the slightly older Hsin Hsin (Ariel Lin Yi-chen), whom he fell in love with as a kid when they grew up together in an orphanage. Somehow, he never grows out of his infatuation.
An early animated sequence in the film explains that they were orphaned by a superhero battle gone awry, which killed many in the city. You may assume it’s all just a child’s fantasy, but A Choo, to our surprise, does mean that literally – and it expects you to suspend your disbelief about its preposterous premise for another hour and a half.
As the grown-up Hsin Hsin falls for a real-life superhero (Zhang Xiao-long) instead, the lovesick EJ resorts to professional boxing to prove that he is just as capable of “protecting” his lifelong crush. Meanwhile, some generic bad guy with superpowers (Vanness Wu Jian-hao) may be out to harm Hsin Hsin.
Ko’s story amuses in its portrayal of how EJ wins over his audiences by unfailingly getting back up no matter how heavily he is beaten up in the ring – and this happens every single match. But A Choo could just as well be seen as a tragic male-entitlement fantasy, in which the delusional protagonist finds himself perpetually friendzoned, and remains puzzled by it to the end.
With Darren Wang Da-lu and Louis Koo Tin-lok appearing in forgettable supporting roles, respectively as EJ’s best friend and a reclusive trainer (and a former superhero for that matter), A Choo is just about quirky enough to entertain on first viewing. Any hope that this might rekindle the delicate touch of heartbreak evoked by Apple of My Eye, however, must be seriously tempered.
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