Featured DVD Review: Girls vs. Gangsters
November 5, 2018
Girls vs. Gangsters - Buy from Amazon: DVD
A couple weeks ago, I got solicitations to review screeners for three different foreign-language films. I decided to grab one, but left it up to chance. One dice roll later and Girls vs. Gangsters was on its way. Was this a lucky dice roll? Or will I regret not doing research to decide?
There will be a short plot summary this week, for reasons that will become obvious really quickly.
The films stars Ivy Chen as Xiwen, who we meet in the middle of a panic attack. Her boyfriend, Qiaoli, just proposed to her and while they are clearly in love, her mind has gone to an unhinged place and it is up to her friend, Kimmy, to calm her down, and to plan the bachelorette party. They have to bring Qiaoli’s little sister, Jinjin. Worse still, Xiwen’s other best friend, Jialan, is also going to be there and Kimmy and Jialan hate each other. They are going to Vietnam to meet up with another friend, Xiaomei, who is an actress who has been filming there. She’s going to show them around, once she’s free from work. In the meantime, the four of them are going to a big party thrown by one of the producers of her movie.
While at the party, both Kimmy and Jialan try to prove they are Xiwen’s real best friend using methods that mostly involve alcohol and bad decisions. So much alcohol is involved that the three of them wake up on a beach in Cambodia, naked, with no memory of what happened. Kimmy and Jialan are both handcuffed to the same metal container, while Xiwen has a tattoo on her back. Meanwhile, Jinjin is missing. They have to figure out what happened, and where Jinjin is, but first, they have to find some cloth, which is when they bump into Mike Tyson.
Does the plot sound familiar?
It’s The Hangover. Girls vs. Gangsters is a Chinese version of The Hangover with a female main cast. If your response to this is, “That sounds interesting, if it is done well.” I have some bad news for you. Even if you think the premise is good, the execution is terrible. How bad is this movie? Mike Tyson is one of the better actors in the movie. The three main characters are not real characters, but merely collections of negative stereotypes about women. Good direction could have salvaged these characters, but that’s not what we got and the performances are best described as shrill and obnoxious. I’ve never seen these actors in any other roles, but I have to assume they’ve been better in other films.
There are parts of the movie that almost work, but all this does is show the wasted potential. Some of the acting and scenes are really cheesy, but in a good way, and if they managed to lean into that, the film could have been worth checking out. Instead, what we end up with is a film that rightfully sat on a studio shelf for two years before being dumped into theaters.
There are only two short clips of an interview with the director, Barbara Wong.
Girls vs. Gangsters is not the worst movie I’ve seen, but it is one of the worst I’ve seen in a while. The DVD has almost no extras and even if you like the setup, there are better options out there.
Video on Demand
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The Movie
The Extras
The Verdict
Filed under: Video Review, Gui Mi 2, Mike Tyson, Ivy Chen, Barbara Wong, Fiona Sit, Ning Chang, Wang Shuilin