Love, Pain and Chow Mein

Fantastic take on the anti romcom, i cant to see more from this director, well filmed and cut with a great story arc

I liked the premise of this movie, but in execution, was a little too "Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" for me*. It started off strongly, the characters were awesome if a little stalker-y, and I loved that most of the movie was in Cantonese (assumption - I *think* it was Cantonese. My profound apologies if it wasn't!) with subtitles throughout. I would have preferred the song at the end to be shorter as it took up a considerable chunk of the movie's run time, and really didn't add to it. Otherwise, good fun. Apart from the stalkeriness... * come on. You HAVE to acknowledge the parallels!

I'm always amazed at they ways people making 48hr films add whole layers of extra complexity and work for themselves. Team Green Square's central character spoke Chinese, and the story was told from his point of view, with subtitles for the rest of us. Overall this was competently put together. The characters were all teenagers played by non-teenagers hamming it up, and it looked like the cast were having a very good time. Story wise, the hero liked a girl, but needed the help of a friend to communicate with her. They conspired to kidnap(? trick?) her, so the hero could serenade her with bad karaoke for rather too long. Although the actors were perfectly charming, the plot irritated me, that ol' "boy obsesses about girl based on how she looks, tries to force her to pay attention to him" trope is one I don't find so funny any more.

A Baywatch-loving Chinese exchange student in New Zealand uses his Kiwi friend/former penpal to try and win the girl of his dreams/obsessions. Energetic lead performance conveying the confidence we'd expect from the underdog in a romcom, creating a strong setup for the "anti" part here. The audience definitely liked this one however I'd just be careful about using things that are probably not ok copyright-wise (karaoke videos in the background and the song from F.R.I.E.N.D.S even in another language probably not ok)

A Chinese exchange student tries to win the girl of his dreams. This film was a hilarious and poignant cross cultural friendship that failed to get the girl. I loved the Chinese language with subtitles and pop culture references. Sadly that segment of Baywatch meant a DQ, because while funny it was a breach of copyright. The strongest thing in this film were the characters, they were funny and energetic. Unfortunately the Freinds song at the end went unnecessarily long but overall this film was really enjoyable and a good approach to the genre.