It is a phenomenon how Feng Xiaogang has established himself as the voice of the people in terms of Mainland Chinese cinema. Nobody else that makes films as didactic and on-the-nose as he does and still be so loved and supported. His latest comedy Personal Tailor is a series of vignettes about its four employees taking on different clients and making their dreams come true. The clients include a chauffeur who wants to be an important authority figure, a schlock B- movie director who wants to learn the essence of good taste and a working class cleaning lady who gets to be rich for one day. The vignettes vary from farce, satire, the absurd and even sometimes the fantastical. Reality is out of the window but it is the fable-like quality that holds the piece together.
Longtime Feng Xiaogang leading man Ge You plays his classic comedy archetype, the swindler with the heart of gold. That character will never get old. Bai Baihe from last year's hit Love is Not Blind and Li Xiao Lu from Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl are both charming and funny. Jackie Chan and Huang Bao Qiang also make small cameos to ease the investors, however neither should be a reason to see the film.
The star of the film is Feng Xiaogang himself, who in each vignette gives us his thoughts and commentary on topics like social class, materialism, rich vs. poor and reality vs. dreams. It is fun watching the four leads run around in costumes and trying to drive their client's ambitions down so their business turns out a profit, but their characterizations are not developed. They are merely puppets to a Feng Xiaogang puppet show and only exist to deliver the director's multiple messages. The heavy messaging has long been a trope of Feng's films and it must be said that Personal Tailor is the most thinly veiled of all his works. If you haven't seen any of Feng Xiaogang's urban comedies, Personal Tailor may not be the place to start.
Lastly, the movie is too long. The segment where the team ventures out in the wild to apologize for man's appalling crimes against nature is too far fetched and 'tree huggy' for my taste. Personal Tailor is by no means Feng Xiaogang's best work and it probably wouldn't have a very long shelf life after its Lunar Year theatrical release. For English speaking audiences, the film actually has good subtitles but its humor probably will be lost in translation. Even for Feng Xiaogang fans, this isn't a movie to own in your Blu-ray collection. To them I say, go see it in theaters while it's current and get your laughs from the latest Feng Xiaogang social commentary. It is a sincere hopeful message, but for me, it's still too didactic.
