If you are the one 2
I was positively impressed by the first film, even though I don’t even remember why that is. Researching the films a little bit, it turns out that the movies made it into theaters outside of China. Nevertheless, I believe that the (limited) US release was probably exclusively watched by Chinese people – who else would watch this crap? Chinese product placement, Chinese humor and especially the dreadful Chinese focus on money and utterly tasteless display of luxury, I have no reason why anybody else would want to bear with this.
Personally I watched the film because I love Ge You and Shu Qi, and even think that they make up an amusing couple. Even in this film, I thought that their relationship is pleasantly comical and just looking at them together made the worthwhile for me. Of course that also meant that I literally skipped over the subplot with the friend which was utterly pointless. Even the moment of realization in “Viaggio in Italia” made more sense to me than this movie. Why must people in movies always come to ultimately love each other for no apparent reason? In “Viaggio in Italia” it’s because they got lost, in “Walk the Line” it’s because they are standing on stage, in this film it’s because somebody else dies. After all, people die every day?
Another appeal of the film was the fact that this is ultimately a slightly sarcastic comedy on love. For a rom-com, people actually talk a lot about what they think love is or should be, and to some degree, that was interesting. It is probably hard to find love these days, or at least Chinese society perceives it so, and taking it with a grain of salt is probably the best thing they can do.
The subtitles to the film are pretty horrible, by the way. Another reason why you shouldn’t watch it unless you speak the language, apart from the fact that this sequel is much, much worse than the original.