My first Thai movie (in the theater, that is)

Note: This actually happened Friday, Oct. 17th and I'm just now getting around to posting it on here. Not like that really matters obviously, just figured I'd be forthright.

Well I finally went and saw my first Thai movie in the theater, but before I talk about the movie itself let me talk a little bit about the theater: Ohhhhh so nice! I picked this place (SFW Interational Cinema on the top floor of CentralWorld) because it was the only one I saw that specifically mentioned the movie having English subtitles (Which were actually very good, couple problems with tenses but that's to be expected since Thai doesn't have verbs change based on tense) but like all the big mall theaters here it was super new and shiny. Very comfortable reclining seats, nice big screen, great sound, all for a $5 ticket. Interesting little tidbit about Thai moviegoing customs, they have a RIDICULOUS amount of commercials and trailers before the movie starts (I'd say about 3x as long as in America) AND right before the film itself begins there is always a five minute montage of footage of their king that you MUST stand during. Not that I mind since really when you think about it we do the same thing with the Star Spangled Banner before a sports event, just thought it was a fun little fact worth mentioning.

Anyway onto the movie itself, the film was called "E-Tim Tay Nae" (no idea what that means) and was about an affable fellow named Tung who's a fake muay thai boxer and real crocodile wrestler (and for some reason the fake muay thai boxing takes precedence over the latter in this movie??) The actor who plays him is named Udom "Nose" Taepanich and is apparently a very well known comedian in Thailand. I'd never seen him before (which isn't saying much since I've seen maybe six Thai movies) but I dug his work in this, he handles the mixture of humor, weirdness and sadness very well. Also he looks alot like Jackie Chan, or at least I think so. Can anyone else see it?




The first half hour of the film shows Tung just sorta going about his business, performing staged muay thai boxing matches at a bar for tourists, feeding stray dogs, breaking up with girls he doesn't know (our man Tung's got this rather pecular habit of breaking up with women before he's even dated them...or met them), and constantly picking on this girl who hangs around him because she pretends to be a "Hmong" for the sake of selling tourists inhalants and other ephemera. Obviously I didn't know anything about them during the movie so I assumed they were sorta like Native Americans but for Thailand, however Wikipedia now tells me otherwise. I enjoyed this segment of the movie a lot because it sort of reminded me of a grown up version of Napoleon Dynamite in Bangkok, just this very socially awkward and endearingly weird dude doing his own thing. It's also shown that Tung is a huge fan of REAL Muay Thai Boxing and is particularly fond of the #1 boxer who (predictably) is a raging asshole that won't even give Tung an autograph. Of course Tung still thinks the world of him and ceaselessly defends his actions.

Right before one of his staged matches Tung eyes a Japanese girl come into the bar and sit in the stands (she's the only one there) and he's immediately smitten with her. He decides to show off his moves much to the chagrin of his friend that he's supposed to be fake boxing and Tung hilariously goes to town on him. By the time the match is over Tung looks up and she's vanished. Dejected, he heads to his favorite food stand and who just happens to stop by but the cute lil' pixie of a Japanese girl? Breaking from describing the story for a bit, the actress who plays this girl (who the internet is telling me is a swimsuit model named Asuka Yanagi, although the pictures I'm finding of her look NOTHING like she does in the movie) is seriously just incomprehensibly adorable. An absolute joy to watch. Back to the proceedings though, they start to chat a little bit in English (which neither of them knows particularly well) and have a cute little exchange where she says Tung is the best boxer she's ever seen and he tells her how they keep soy sauce in Coke bottles. Of course Tung being Tung he sees a good thing starting to happen (we're led to believe this is the first time that's actually happened) and like always tries to nip it in the bud by telling her they need to break up. Problem is he can't explain the concept well enough in English and she has no idea what he's trying to say!

Tung decides to drown his sorrows at his favorite bar and we meet his "farang" (Thai for foreigner) friend who runs the place. The farang tells him he needs to stop breaking up with girls (since as far as he knows Tung has actually been dating all of these women) and follow his heart. Tung decides he's right and runs back to the food stand only to find that the Japanese sprite has vanished, possibly back to the World of Fairies to be with her kind. He goes about his regular routine for a little while and then lo and behold the Hmong girl brings Tung a note from the Japanese girl that says "Go-oodbye." This leads to a very funny exchange where Tung and his friend try to figure out what she's trying to say until the bar owner smacks some sense into him. With a wave of the movie magic wand Tung instantly figures out what Japanese restaraunt she's eating at and slips her a note that says something cute which unfortunately I can't remember. Either way he then shows up with a microphone and does a little song and dance and this leads into a SUPER cute montage of them enjoying each others company.

Now as far as the trailers and the poster had showed me this WAS the movie: He meets the Japanese girl, he's a muay thai boxer, they fall for each other, that's the whole movie. I mean just look at the poster:



What they didn't convey is that as happy as they are Tung ends up taking the Japanese girl to see his muay thai hero fight. After the fight Tung goes back stage to get an autograph (which he's able to do now since he's got a hottie in tow) and it turns out that aside from being ripped and tall and handsome Mr. Boxer Man ALSO speaks Japanese! Oh snaaap, Tung's looking like a scrub now! After this Tung has another staged match and during it Japanese Girl shows up and as a surprise has brought Boxing Man along with her. Tung asks Boxing Man to come in and spar with him and like the jerk he is he agrees to and pummels Tung senseless. During this beating the Japanese Girl closes her eyes and imagines the whole thing as an anime sequence which I found to be a very effective (and cheap!) way to play up how violent this encounter is. As he's about to slip out of consciousness Boxing Man tells Tung that his fundamentals are good and he's willing to train him if he wants to. Tung wakes up in the hospital some indiscriminate amount of time later and is very forgiving of Boxing Man, saying he's a professional and he isn't able to fight at less than 100%. Once he's off the hospital bed Tung goes to find the Japanese Girl and isn't able to, then decides to take Boxing Man up on his training offer and stumbles upon the two of them in bed. Heartbroken, he staggers out.

Alright, this whole blow-by-blow summary thing is WAAAAY too long so I'll try to step it up a bit more. Basically after this happens Tung goes to the gym and pleads with Boxing Man to give him back his lady, Boxing Man says screw you, Tung says please again, Boxing Man says I'll fight you for her...ONE HANDED! Tung isn't too keen on this but gets goaded into a fully sanctioned, heavily advertised match one month from then. He doesn't know what he should do for training and happens to discover that Foreign Bar Owner is a certified ass kicker, asks him for training, Foreign Man teaches him how to play Badminton and puts him through the usual workout montage paces. Tung asks why he's playing all this badminton and when they're gonna start punching crap and Foreign Bar Owner says "I don't know how to train people to fight". Tung feels betrayed and skulks off to the bar he used to work for which he sorta neglected to call during all this and tell them he wasn't coming in anymore. After some whacking from the Bar Lady she shows him that everybody's got together to wish him the best and they do a hilarious little dance number. Hmong Girl made him some boxing shorts by hand! After this it's off to the fight, which if you've seen ANY movie about the underdog going up against the champion has only one possible outcome. It turns out all that badminton was to teach Tung a way of fighting that a traditional muay thai boxer wouldn't expect or know how to counteract. When it looks like Tung has the upperhand Japanese Girl inexplicably gives Tung a bottle of drugged water and Boxing Man owns his ass the next round. Right before another round is set to begin the Hmong girl remembers that the Boxing Man hates the smell of durian (it's this fruit that smells awful but tastes great, go figure) and rubs it all over Tung. Tung flips out and yells at her for being around all the time and for smearing smelly crap on him and just being weird and tells her he never wants to see her again. Then he proceeds to beat Boxing Man by giving him a severe allergic reaction just by his close proximity. Victory!

Japanese Girl comes into the locker room after the fight and tearfully apologizes for the drugged water bottle, which the audience comes to realize Tung hadn't even considered until she admitted it. He pretends to have known all about it though and she vanishes out of his life again, and then Tung realizes the girl for him all along was Hmong and chases her down only to discover she really IS a Hmong and lives with her tribespeople family and is working at a McDonalds! He sings a little ditty for her over the McDonalds P.A. and then they kiss and it's all over, happy ending!

Yeah I'll fully admit that my summary of this film is much longer than it needs to be considering how standard-issue the plot is. Overall I enjoyed the film alot and appreciated seeing it, it's genuinely funny and I laughed out loud a lot more than I expected to. I also really enjoyed the characters and all of their quirks. What really bothered me is it seemed like they made two different films: one is about a hapless weirdo who meets a super cute Japanese girl (obviously the one I'd prefer to see) and the other one is about a dude betrayed who fights to regain his honor and remake Rocky. The two don't mesh well together and the film feels the weaker for it, particularly in that I couldn't understand the motivation of the Japanese girl AT ALL. Now granted Tung is just this ordinary schlub and Boxing Man is this huge hunk o' dude who speaks her frigging language so I can get why she'd sleep with him. The problem though is once Tung catches them in bed together you NEVER see her again until she's in the stands at the match, where honestly she looks just as concerned for him as she does for Boxing Man. The whole drugged water bottle thing is a bizarre plot device that serves no purpose other than to write Japanese Girl out of the picture, I mean short of there being some subplot that was cut where it turns out she had money riding on Boxing Man or they were gonna get married or something like that this whole aspect is just pointless and destroys your sympathy for the character for seemingly no reason.

Really I'm just saying that considering the poster for this movie features Tung and Japanese Girl equally (and NO ONE ELSE) it's really surprising that she's such a crucial part of the plot up until a certain point and then just vanishes for a significant chunk of the film. Not that I think films should be without strife but I really just wish the film was structured around what they sold it on, two very different people from different countries finding each other and connecting despite their differences. You could still have the whole boxing match if you wanted to because Boxing Man would want Japanese Girl and Tung has to fight to defend her honor, something like that. Granted I think the Hmong girl is very cute and I liked in the end where they referenced their differences in the past but it still feels like a very different movie.

The strange thing is I don't mind films that follow very well-worn archetypes on principle alone. Some of my favorite films to watch are the most obvious, run-of-the-mill plots that you've seen in hundreds of other movies. I think where I respect those movies though is in their transparency, they're never trying to hide what sort of movies they are and they wear their influences on their sleeve. This film however started off with a completely different trajectory and then sort of transformed into one of those "He can do it if he believes in the power of his dreams!" flicks which I find (not to be overly dramatic) dishonest. Overall I would still recommend this film as being worth watching though, when it does it right it does it VERY right and it's a feel-good flick that doesn't make you feel stupid for enjoying it.

Well that's FINALLY the end of this post, I greatly appreciate anybody who had the patience or intestinal fortitude to make it all the way down here and I promise if I do reviews in the future they'll be a lot shorter. Speaking of which tomorrow (not this review's tomorrow but the real one, Wed. Oct 29th) I'm going with Tina to see a new Thai movie called Queens of Langkasuka that looks EPIC. Here's a YouTube copy of the trailer (no subs, but really this movie looks like it's all about the visuals):



Mmm, pretty. I hate to pigeonhole the film before even seeing it but I get a definite "Thai Pirates of the Caribbean" vibe off of it (in a good way), definitely looking forward to seeing this one in the theater just to drink in all the spectacle. Can you believe this was made for only $10 million!?!?