Chu Liu Xiang (Chor Lau Heung) 1995
This is the 1995 Taiwanese production with Adam Cheng as Chu Liuxiang. I recently bought the VCD set from yesasia.com and watched it over the course of a week or two (probably not how it was meant to be viewed!), which is a tribute to its power to hold my attention over 40 episodes (27 discs)!
For me, Adam Cheng is THE Chu Liuxiang. Obviously, he's older in this version than when he played the part in 1979, but I thought he carried it off with charm and verve. I have no idea who the other actors were, but I liked most of them, even if at times CLX's 3 ship maidens got to be a bit much when added to the other random women he collected along the way. (Actually, the one I personally found the cutest was the woman chasing after the old wine fiend, Hu Tie Hua.) The action scenes were fun to watch: not overburdened with crappy CGI like more recent series, not too much intrusive wirework. Sure, there were cheap effects (smoke! exploding "rocks"! sparkly lightning and fireworks!) but people MOVED, they didn't just strike artistic poses and stand there waiting for the special effects to be filled in. And yes, the scenery and sets looked fairly cheap (especially all those secret tunnels), in comparison to the lavish mainland productions that have been made since c. 2000. The music was also repetitive and too loud (I couldn't hear the dialogue at times, really wishing for subtitles!) and the opening theme song was rather crap (in my opinion).
Plot...hrmm...what can I say? I've only read the first of Gu Long's CLX books, so I can't swear to what is or isn't based on them, but my impression was that the writers just made this one up themselves, ripping off ideas from all over the place. I recognized a few major plot tokens from Jin Yong's "Xiao Ao Jiang Hu" (Smiling, Proud Wanderer/State of Divinity). But just the tokens, not the actual plot or characters. But this isn't surprising, considering that they already made a CLX series in 1979, then 1982, then 1984...heh. Anyway, they did a reasonable job, kicking things off with the ever-popular "hero falsely accused and must clear his name" cliche. Not TOO many people pretended to die, and the number of "there would be no plot if people would just TALK to each other" threads was reasonably low. No one fell or jumped off a cliff! Ha ha. And maybe 15 eps out of 40, one of the main characters was taking a turn being poisoned/dying/etc. Quite a lot of people being idiots and falsely blaming one of the protagonists (granted some of them were planted/coached by the villain, but still, you'd think they'd think things through a bit more).
Mainly, the CLX series are just fun to watch. A nice trio of heros we have: one likes women, one likes wine, and one likes money. Personally, I liked the merchant (Ji Bing Ye) best. At least he's one Jiang Hu character where we see how he makes his money (and he doesn't just go and steal it like the other two!) And I loved how he went into business with the woman chasing after Hu Tiehua. Heh heh! As for Shangguan Wuji (CLX's main love interest in this series), she was all right. Had a tendancy to want to run off in a huff, but luckily didn't do it TOO often. Not sure how happy she'd really be in the long term with CLX (or vice versa), but, well, it's a TV show, so it works well enough. Of the lesser supporting characters... my favorites were the restauranteur who was once a cook in the royal palace and the honest imperial cop (Muo Yan?) who was also a friend of CLX.
Villains...the main villain was well-played. He had charisma and carried out his villainy with flair. His main minions were good, too.
Plenty of quirky mechanisms and odd action scenes to keep me amused. (A dance with stools where the woman places the stool in front of her intended. Guess where the princess puts hers? GASP! Fun with umbrellas! Barrel fighters! A weird semi-magical gramaphone! Invisible writing!? That is actually...something even more bizarre? Choosing a leader by waiting for someone to complete a drawing! etc.)
In sum: highly enjoyable, not terribly original wuxia series
For me, Adam Cheng is THE Chu Liuxiang. Obviously, he's older in this version than when he played the part in 1979, but I thought he carried it off with charm and verve. I have no idea who the other actors were, but I liked most of them, even if at times CLX's 3 ship maidens got to be a bit much when added to the other random women he collected along the way. (Actually, the one I personally found the cutest was the woman chasing after the old wine fiend, Hu Tie Hua.) The action scenes were fun to watch: not overburdened with crappy CGI like more recent series, not too much intrusive wirework. Sure, there were cheap effects (smoke! exploding "rocks"! sparkly lightning and fireworks!) but people MOVED, they didn't just strike artistic poses and stand there waiting for the special effects to be filled in. And yes, the scenery and sets looked fairly cheap (especially all those secret tunnels), in comparison to the lavish mainland productions that have been made since c. 2000. The music was also repetitive and too loud (I couldn't hear the dialogue at times, really wishing for subtitles!) and the opening theme song was rather crap (in my opinion).
Plot...hrmm...what can I say? I've only read the first of Gu Long's CLX books, so I can't swear to what is or isn't based on them, but my impression was that the writers just made this one up themselves, ripping off ideas from all over the place. I recognized a few major plot tokens from Jin Yong's "Xiao Ao Jiang Hu" (Smiling, Proud Wanderer/State of Divinity). But just the tokens, not the actual plot or characters. But this isn't surprising, considering that they already made a CLX series in 1979, then 1982, then 1984...heh. Anyway, they did a reasonable job, kicking things off with the ever-popular "hero falsely accused and must clear his name" cliche. Not TOO many people pretended to die, and the number of "there would be no plot if people would just TALK to each other" threads was reasonably low. No one fell or jumped off a cliff! Ha ha. And maybe 15 eps out of 40, one of the main characters was taking a turn being poisoned/dying/etc. Quite a lot of people being idiots and falsely blaming one of the protagonists (granted some of them were planted/coached by the villain, but still, you'd think they'd think things through a bit more).
Mainly, the CLX series are just fun to watch. A nice trio of heros we have: one likes women, one likes wine, and one likes money. Personally, I liked the merchant (Ji Bing Ye) best. At least he's one Jiang Hu character where we see how he makes his money (and he doesn't just go and steal it like the other two!) And I loved how he went into business with the woman chasing after Hu Tiehua. Heh heh! As for Shangguan Wuji (CLX's main love interest in this series), she was all right. Had a tendancy to want to run off in a huff, but luckily didn't do it TOO often. Not sure how happy she'd really be in the long term with CLX (or vice versa), but, well, it's a TV show, so it works well enough. Of the lesser supporting characters... my favorites were the restauranteur who was once a cook in the royal palace and the honest imperial cop (Muo Yan?) who was also a friend of CLX.
Villains...the main villain was well-played. He had charisma and carried out his villainy with flair. His main minions were good, too.
Plenty of quirky mechanisms and odd action scenes to keep me amused. (A dance with stools where the woman places the stool in front of her intended. Guess where the princess puts hers? GASP! Fun with umbrellas! Barrel fighters! A weird semi-magical gramaphone! Invisible writing!? That is actually...something even more bizarre? Choosing a leader by waiting for someone to complete a drawing! etc.)
In sum: highly enjoyable, not terribly original wuxia series
posted by Taisch @ 8:29 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home