SINGAPORE- Singapore director Jack Neo returns to film directing
with his latest Lunar New Year film "We Not Naughty", the first film he
has directed since 2010's "Being Human".
The film revolves around Wei Jie (Shawn Lee) and Jian Ren (Joshua
Ang), best friends who face a variety of problems at home and become
involved with gangsters.
Their school lecturer CK (Daniel Chan) is determined to help them, but the two boys reject his assistance, even as their situation at home and in the gang steadily becomes more and more complicated.
There are also secondary story threads where Wei Jie's sister gets embroiled in an online bullying case and CK deals with the fallout from his streaking in school, as a result of losing a bet with Wei Jie and Jian Ren.
More isn't always better
The film has a very strong Jack Neo flavour and greatly resembles his previous offerings like "I Not Stupid", mixing in moral messages with some humour and a good dose of drama.
The problem is "We Not Naughty" tries to do too much – while Neo's previous films tend to deal with a specific issue, like the immense pressure to excel Singaporean children face in "I Not Stupid", "We Not Naughty" deals with a whole basket of issues.
The film touched on cyber bullying, gambling addiction, family violence, the power of new media, the dangers of being in a gang, the importance of learning mandarin … the list goes on.
With so many things to talk about, the messages blend into one another and left audiences struggling to piece together the disjointed fragments of the story and figure out what is the main point of the film.
Perhaps due to the sheer amount of content Neo tried to pack into his film, its running time also stretched to over two hours which only served to compound the problem – it is hard to follow and very long.
Redefining the term "Commercial Film"
"We Not Naughty" also has a problem with extremely overt product placements, which are jarring and quite off putting.
It is true almost every film has product placements, but the product placements in "We Not Naughty" are so obvious that it feels as though Neo had just slipped in entire television commercials into his film at some points.
A little more effort blending the products into the storyline could have gone a long way.
Fortunately for Neo, "We Not Naughty" retains just enough of what worked in his previous films, like his brand of earthy humour and situations the audience can identify with, to save it from becoming more of a tedious sermon than a film.
The cast also played their characters reasonably well, with Lee and Ang displaying a lot of chemistry in the film.
Those who have enjoyed Neo's previous films will probably like "We Not Naughty", as it follows the same basic formula.
However, those who are looking for something fresh or just want the laughs without all the proselytizing and baggage will probably be better off looking elsewhere.
"We Not Naughty" is now showing.
The film revolves around Wei Jie (Shawn Lee) and Jian Ren (Joshua
Ang), best friends who face a variety of problems at home and become
involved with gangsters.Their school lecturer CK (Daniel Chan) is determined to help them, but the two boys reject his assistance, even as their situation at home and in the gang steadily becomes more and more complicated.
There are also secondary story threads where Wei Jie's sister gets embroiled in an online bullying case and CK deals with the fallout from his streaking in school, as a result of losing a bet with Wei Jie and Jian Ren.
More isn't always better
The film has a very strong Jack Neo flavour and greatly resembles his previous offerings like "I Not Stupid", mixing in moral messages with some humour and a good dose of drama.
The problem is "We Not Naughty" tries to do too much – while Neo's previous films tend to deal with a specific issue, like the immense pressure to excel Singaporean children face in "I Not Stupid", "We Not Naughty" deals with a whole basket of issues.
The film touched on cyber bullying, gambling addiction, family violence, the power of new media, the dangers of being in a gang, the importance of learning mandarin … the list goes on.
With so many things to talk about, the messages blend into one another and left audiences struggling to piece together the disjointed fragments of the story and figure out what is the main point of the film.
Perhaps due to the sheer amount of content Neo tried to pack into his film, its running time also stretched to over two hours which only served to compound the problem – it is hard to follow and very long.
Redefining the term "Commercial Film"
"We Not Naughty" also has a problem with extremely overt product placements, which are jarring and quite off putting.
It is true almost every film has product placements, but the product placements in "We Not Naughty" are so obvious that it feels as though Neo had just slipped in entire television commercials into his film at some points.
A little more effort blending the products into the storyline could have gone a long way.
Fortunately for Neo, "We Not Naughty" retains just enough of what worked in his previous films, like his brand of earthy humour and situations the audience can identify with, to save it from becoming more of a tedious sermon than a film.
The cast also played their characters reasonably well, with Lee and Ang displaying a lot of chemistry in the film.
Those who have enjoyed Neo's previous films will probably like "We Not Naughty", as it follows the same basic formula.
However, those who are looking for something fresh or just want the laughs without all the proselytizing and baggage will probably be better off looking elsewhere.
"We Not Naughty" is now showing.
-Channelnewsasia.com
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