The Lyricist Wannabe

Though it does labour the joke a little after a while, this is actually quite a fun story about a tenacious young student who is determined to be a lyricist. Despite the fact that her teacher (Pak Hon Chu) claims nobody ever makes money writing songs (he's clearly never heard of Don Black, or Sir Tim Rice or Bernie Taupin!), and the fact that she cannot actually read music, she perseveres. She's not having much luck though - most of her work ends up being "off-melody" - with some quite hilariously double-entendre consequences, but "Sze" (Suet-Ying Chung) is determined. Now it doesn't really help the gist of this that many of her rhymes go to prove the obvious point that English, Cantonese and Mandarin have completely different tones and rhyming points - and that means that sometimes the subtitled versions of her lyrics are borderline surreal. They don't scan in the slightest in just about any language and her attempts to find a musician and/or singer to work with just seem doomed to failure. She's persistent, though, and as the years go by she does just about everything to convince the record industry that her's is a skill they want! This works quite well at engagingly poking fun at the whole songwriting business. The haphazard way in which things work - or don't, the sheer luck involved, good looks, face fits, back-stabbing and well, you have to feel just a bit sorry for her long suffering boyfriend "Zeke" (Yukki Tai) and, for that matter, her easy on the eye chanteur "Mak" (Anson Chan) who constantly vacillates between encouraging and placating her somewhat erratic passion. It's a story about a dream (and for a listening audience - a nightmare) and is quite enjoyable to watch.

Giving this an 7/10 rating

Dive into the world of music production, and it's very tough business. Writer director Norris Wong, does a splendid job with clever colourful visuals, with animated bits sprung in, good sound design, that is important since this a film about music, and great acting.

Suet-Ying Chung is very charming, soft and innocent as the lead role she plays, and she has it really tough, and you just wonder, why go through this, well she is determined, that's why, and she goes through the bad and the bad, as we she her journey to reach her goal. The other actors really do push the story along and are not just padding, the father character is the most fun, and there really is some laughs here and there, but it's mostly a very heart breaking journey, but a good one.

This is not 'Maestro' or 'A Star is Born', both films about the music industry, this is a different point of view of it, a lot more fun, and the right ending, it was really worth a look. A good Chinese film.