The Movie Emperor (PG13)

127 minutes, now showing
4 stars

The story: In this satirical comedy, Hong Kong star Lau Wai-chi (Andy Lau) is going through a crisis of confidence. Losing the Best Actor prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards to a rival has shaken him so much, he resorts to a sure-fire awards-bait strategy: He will star in a Chinese art-house movie, the sort that Western film festival juries will love. The glamorous actor will take on the role of a noble but penniless pig farmer.

At one point, an associate of A-list actor Wai-chi scolds him for pandering to white film festival juries by producing yet another movie about downtrodden Chinese peasants. 

“They want only to see us in padded cotton jackets,” complains the associate in an inside joke about the low-key racism of the art-house movie circuit, one of many jabs that run through this acutely observed and funny send-up of bratty actor behaviour, even brattier Chinese tech bros, shady film financing, netizen mobs and the hollowness of celebrity worship. 

How this sly send-up of show business got marketed as a Chinese New Year movie is puzzling. Lau’s status as a major star might have something to do with it, but this work has nothing of the histrionics that accompany the traditional festive comedy. 

No matter. Chinese director Ning Hao, who also plays the movie director given the job of making the urbane Wai-chi look like a proper farmer, never steps on a joke nor oversells punchlines. 

His wide frames give plenty of space for the sense of absurdity to grow.

At an award show attended by Hong Kong glitterati – actor Tony Leung Ka Fai and other celebrities make cameos – Ning’s camera takes a wide view of the workers furiously setting up tents and laying out the red carpet, only for them to return in a few hours to take it all down. 

Lau’s character, the spoilt actor slumming it in rural China to soak up authentic peasant vibes, lands himself in one cringe-making moment after another. He makes Wai-chi’s discomfort sweatily palpable.

Kudos to distributor mm2 Entertainment and the Singapore authorities for not dubbing over the original Cantonese dialogue. Wai-chi’s insecurity about his Mandarin pronunciation is one of The Movie Emperor’s best running gags. 

There is a joke here that will remind Singaporeans of Western tourists who are disappointed by the island’s lack of “Asianness”. 

Wai-chi, while scouring the countryside for the quaint hovels of his imagination, asks a villager where he can find families who still follow the old ways.

The villager says: “Oh, you mean poor people? Sorry, we haven’t been poor in years.” 

Hot take: This funny, good-natured takedown of celebrity culture and other ills of modern China does its job without calling attention to itself about how clever it is.