[Reviews] Dummy Mommy Without a Baby & Horror Hotline: Big Head Monster!
 

Dummy Mommy Without a Baby

This movie is damn funny. It doesn't fizzle out like many HK comedies of late either - it is pretty much consistantly funny throughout. It's about a girl who is about to lose her job but gets an idea to claim she's pregnant so she can keep her job a little longer since there's a policy of not sacking pregnant women. Over time the lie becomes more complicated. It's alot like watching an episode of I Love Lucy as this girl and her friend bumble around trying to keep their string of lies intact. It was alot funnier than I thought it would be. I quite enjoyed it.

The best friend was played by Niki Chow who also appears in Big Head Monster which I'll review next and which is also a Mei Ah DVD. Mei Ah did a great job with this DVD with one exception (which I'll get to in a moment). The image quality was top notch and the sound was also great... it offered DD2.0, DD5.1, and DTS in both Cantonese and Mandarin along with the standard 3 subtitle choices. It also contained quite a few extras. Mei Ah is also straying from the boring blue cases with the boring colored spines and artwork - this case is clear and the artwork is in bright orange contrasting with a blue sky and just looks much different from past Mei Ah discs. If you keep your DVDs in order of Studio, then this will probably make you have to reorganize a little. For the most part, I'm really impressed with how much Mei Ah has improved - down to their intro logo (the old one is still there, but their new one is far less annoying). Now the bad part... in order for the DVD to contain 6 audio soundtracks, they had to make this a flipper. -eek- Yes - a flipper. Halfway through the film you have to take it out and flip it over. It's not too much of a hassle, but they certainly could've handled it differently. Moved the extras to side two along with a Mandarin 2.0 and 5.1 version of the film and just have the Cantonese 2.0, 5.1 and DTS tracks on side one. Still - they get an 'A' for effort here and I hope they keep it up (except for the flipper part).

Overall, I'd give this film a 8/10 and a big :thumbsup: - it was very enjoyable and funny. Especially if you enjoy watching I Love Lucy.

Horror Hotline... Big Head Monster

Niki Chow again appears in this new Mei Ah release. Sam Lee and Francis Ng also appear... Sam Lee's part is very small, but Francis Ng plays a signifigant role in the film. Another coincidence between these two films is that both films talk of a baby, but you never get to see it. ;) Basically - this film is about this American film crew who goes to Hong Kong to film a documentary about this radio show there called Horror Hotline. The radio show takes calls from listeners about different urban legend type horror stories. During the filming of the documentary a caller calls in to discuss an experience he had almost 40 years ago as a child... he saw a big head baby in a cage. -eek- Anyway - none of it really makes much sense, but they use alot of recycled scare tactics from US films such as Silence of the Lambs, Seven and Blair Witch Project... even Ring deserves a bit of creative credit here.

There are a few moments of creepiness and despite the stupid title, the movie does take itself seriously. It's not really all that bad, but then again it doesn't really deliver the scares like it should. Many of the plot devices are so far fetched that you have to be made of rubber to get your imagination to stretch enough to believe them. I've seen much worse though and I consider myself to be really picky about my horror movies, but I can see how someone would like this film.

The DVD is another good job by Mei Ah. It had an alternate ending and some other extra features (again, not subtitled... when will we be able to regularly get subtitles on extra features??). There was a 5.1 surround and a 2.0 for both Cantonese and Mandarin, also the standard 3 subtitle choices. The box and artwork are the old style (not the old old Mei Ah style where the artwork was ugly brown/bronze color) and the menu is typical for recent Mei Ah releases. The video is a little washed out - probably due to a dirty transfer machine, but it wasn't all that bad. The sound and subtitles were fine. My only gripe is that when it came time to show the ending, the DVD paused and jumped to a menu so I could choose my ending. I don't think I like that too much. They should've let me just see the original ending and then leave the alternate ending as an extra. They don't pick up from the same spot anyway. Both endings are similar anyway in that they are loose rip-offs of the Blair Witch, but neither of them offer any insight to what the hell Big Head Baby was or what was going on in the film or what it all means.

Overall, I guess I'd give this film a 6/10 (my girlfriend says 5/10 or maybe 6/10 and attributes it to the fact that she didn't get to see the big head baby)... My girlfriend gives it a :down:, but I'm on the fence about it. I'd probably say skip it as well, but the film does contain some very nice imagery and cinematography. The acting ranges from poor to good, but I'd have to blame the script I think. It's not a total mess and someone who likes HK horror films alot will probably be pleased by it. It's got a fairly decent pace and if you can look past some of the stupid plot devices, it might just entertain you for an hour and a half... so I guess it gets an :up: from me, but only for those people who like HK horror films alot. The rest of you should just skip it.

I would second Trigger's review about "Dummy Mommy". It is, as he puts it, damn funny all the way through.

The ending is however, stupid. Part of the fun of seeing a high concept movie like this, is to find out how they 'resolve' the mess at the end. In this movie, the writers didn't even bother.

All the fun throughout would more than make up for this though!

the lead for Dummy Mommy... is Miriam Yeung, one of HK's most popular singers, who's quickly becoming one of HK's funniest actresses with her role in this movie and in Feel 100% II. Niki Chow was nominated for Best Newcomer for her role in Dummy Mommy...everyone loves to bash Edison Chen after his role in Gen-Y Cops but he actually was ok in this movie as the young boss of the company...

Oh yeah - the ending did indeed kinda leave you wanting more or something different. Kinda a 200 Cigarettes ending. Me and my girlfriend both kinda felt let down by the ending, but it didn't spoil the fact that the movie was good. :)

What was wrong with the ending for Dummy Mummy, other than they imply that lying and cheating leads to promotions??
They resolved the ad campaign, and everyone got their man....


I thought Horror Hotline was one of the better HK horror movies in a long while.... and recommend it.
There's an audio glitch on the DVD. The Cantonese soundtrack has a drop-out during a crucial scene with a caller that phones in. It is fine on the Mandarin track. It's the scene where they playback the call, to hear what the last woprds were... and it drops out there!!! damn....



J.T.

I think we're talking about the ending ending in which she narrates over some snapshots - it just has a "we give up" feel to it. It would've been a bit nicer had they given us a real ending and then perhaps do a bit of happily ever after snapshots with narration. Plus while the ending is happy, it just doesn't really satisfy... I didn't like the specifics of the outcomes. Just because the ending is positive doesn't mean I have to be satisfied with it.

My copy didn't drop out. I think he said "big head baby". ;)

By the way, jtkv, that's a nice organized list of MP3s you have on the site that you have on your Asian DVD Guide posts. I can play the Miriam Yeung Dummy Mommy theme song over and over again without getting bored....

Here's the theme song:
http://204.92.69.141:88/Dummy%20Mumm...am%20Yeung.mp3

YH,
It was supposed to be for AsianDVDGuide users only.. now it'll get flooded by users from here too!

Hope the T1 can keep up :)

I try to add songs weekly....


J.T.

I just decided to download this on a whim and you're right - I can't stop listening to it for some reason... :D It makes me happy. I don't even know what they're singing. It could be "She eats dog food with maple syrup and your nose looks like a grapefruit" for all I know. :)

Thx for the reviews Trigger. Dummy Mommy goes on my buy-list now. :)

Should've gone on your list back in February when I did the review... ;)

As a companion piece, you should add Love Undercover. a little disappointing with the subtitles, but funny none the less on a great DVD by Mei Ah. (although extras, apart from the trailers and the Mei Ah promo, which can be found by highlighting the Mei Ah badge, aren't subtitled in english)

I thought Dummy Mommy, Without a Baby was funny too. I just didn't like how it's a 2 sided disc.


I hope Love Undercover isn't like that, cuz I ordered that.

Love Undercover is a great disc.
DVD-9 and lots of extras.... well, other than (missing) subtitle problems...


J.T.

Do you mean like the Second Time Around subtitle problem??

yeah... not the entire dialogue is translated.. missing sections.


J.T.

:(

Off my list.... I couldn't even finish STA, cause I felt I was missing so much...

there are a few missing subtitles in Love Undercover, but not enough to detract from the enjoyment of the film itself IMO. I counted only around 6 missing ones, and IMO not overly major stuff that you would miss. Easy for me to say since I do understand the dialogue though...

True, only some sections... not as bad as STS, but I have not watched STS DVD yet...
Actually, it's not missing sections of dialogue, just only translated half the sentence.
Again, it's only in a few scenes...


J.T.

Well, that doesn't sound near as bad. STA is missing subtitles through the whole film. I'd say at least 35% of subs are missing.

roseart,
Nope, the Love Undercover subtitles are definitely not that bad....
All dialogue have translations, just some are missing a few words...

J.T.

now what you do want to watch out for is the Taiseng North American version of Miriam's latest movie Dry Wood Fierce Fire. There is a 27-minute section that is missing subtitles entirely. Since the DVD has not come out yet in HK, there is no HK version to compare to but I'm guessing that the HK version will be corrected.

Also, the North American Taiseng DVD versions of Wesley's Mysterious Files and Inner Senses also seem to have English subtitle scripting problems, plus on the Wesley DVD there is no DTS track. No subtitle problems on the HK version, plus the DTS track exists.

I just picked up Dry Wood Fierce Fire from Sensasian on VCD. I stay away from Tai Seng these days since it's just paying more for the same DVD or else paying more for a crappy version on DVD... occasionally they'll come out with a special edition for a decent price but lately it's been for movies that are already out somewhere else cheaper. Don't know what happened to Tai Seng, for awhile it looked like they were turning it around. Oh well...