The Lion Men

Anyone who's followed Jack Neo's movie career from the very beginning will find themselves, once again, shaking their heads in despair at The Lion Men. Whatever promise, grit and passion he displayed in the genuinely touching, powerful I Not Stupid has been slowly frittered away through the years. The Lion Men represents the latest and perhaps most tragic downturn of all. It's evident that Neo hit upon a great money- making strategy with last year's Ah Boys To Men duology, and so he's recycled everything about it - from cast to bloated story and two-part structure - to concoct something even less inspiring and more money- grubbing than before.

Stripped down to basics, the plot of the film is actually not half-bad. It focuses on the Tiger Crane Lion Dance Association, an old-school troupe headed by strict, conservative Master He (Chen Tianwen). Soh (Tosh Zhang) is the indisputable star: a lion dancer with such prodigious skills that he's been nicknamed Lion God. Mikey (Wang Weiliang) cheerfully plays second banana, happy to stay in the background while Soh leads the team. Complications arise when Soh sets out to punch up Tiger Crane's resolutely traditional act, inspired by the funky moves of Xiaoyu (Eva Cheng) and her hip-hop dance crew. When Master He refuses, the battle of the lion dance troupes begins.

There's a germ of a good story in there somewhere: one that could pose interesting questions about the push and pull of tradition and modernity. It's an important theme in fast-paced, ever-changing Singapore: how do we hang on to our customs when the city is evolving so very quickly? In a handful of moments, The Lion Men makes a pass at telling a real story, one that might actually have something real to say about the ideas it raises.

Unfortunately, Neo negates anything good about his premise with a flabby, over-stuffed script - one that sprawls every which way with little care for economy, just as the clumsy behemoth that is Ah Boys did. He stretches perhaps an hour worth of story into 130 increasingly tedious minutes, sending his hapless and hopelessly-underdeveloped characters into pointless situations to pad out the film's running time. There's a scene that takes place in Master He's house that's supposed to play out as high comedy, as Soh tries desperately to keep out of sight. Instead, this particular farce feels forced and more than a little embarrassing for all concerned.

Anyone who thought the over-hyped CGI in Ah Boys was disappointing will feel the same about the moments shoehorned into The Lion Men. It's not that the CGI is bad; it's actually halfway decent. But it's so poorly- plotted - revolving as it does around Mikey's determination to fill Soh's shoes by becoming some sort of lion-dance superhero - that it feels awkward and a waste of all the resources that were no doubt poured into those scenes.

Character work is also sorely lacking, to the extent that even the better actors in Neo's cast suffer from it. Chen, who demonstrated such great sensitivity in Ilo Ilo, is criminally abused in the role of Master He, who alternates between steely tyrant and amiable buffoon with scarcely any middle ground. Zhang, who made quite an impression as a drill sergeant in Ah Boys, struggles to hold up his third of the film. There's very little of the supposed charisma of a Lion God to Zhang, but Neo plays it up so relentlessly that you start to pity the young actor for not being as cool or as spectacular as his character is made out to be.

The sole bright spot in the film is Wang, who possesses such a uniquely sweet charm on screen that - for a few fleeting moments - he makes the film around him slightly better. As it turns out, Mikey is the heart of the film, not Soh, and it's almost tragic to watch the film get progressively worse as his character emerges slowly from the shadows.

One of the worst things about The Lion Men is its absolutely awful attempts at product placement. In recent years, it's become an unfortunate hallmark of Neo's work. In place of artistic integrity, he is now better-known for showcasing his sponsors in so brutally blunt a way that it's actually a distraction within his film's narrative. And yet, he somehow manages to take that to a new low in The Lion Men: every other scene flings another product at the audience, from beer to canned drinks, pre-paid cards to bakery chains. It says something when an audience of film critics - long ago rendered cynical and inured to the ways of the movie business - collectively groan when one last blatant commercial turns up and tries to pass itself off as a legitimate part of the film.

By the time The Lion Men clangs and clatters to its abrupt and yet very welcome end, audiences might find themselves wondering what story there is left to tell. The trailer for Movie #2 that Neo adds to the credits only adds insult to injury, suggesting that his non-plot will dip even further into the realm of melodramatic soap opera. In fact, it plays like a warning for anyone who has fond memories of I Not Stupid and its thought-provoking social commentary.

Stay away, it seems to say, for there is little of the artist to Neo now. The Lion Men - badly-conceived, poorly-scripted, and terribly- executed as it is - is little more than a barely-disguised attempt to squeeze ever more cash out of movie-goers. Don't give Neo the satisfaction of being the only one laughing... all the way to the bank.