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- Categories:Gender, Movie, Chinese, Body Swap, Magical, Possession, Drama,
Fantasy
- Avalible on Video and on DVD,
- English Subtitled
- aka "Xi you ji da jie ju zhi xian lu qi"
- (C) 1994
Description
This is listed at the IMDB and a number of other sites offer
reviews. Amazon.com has used copies on occasion. This is a copy of
a review that explains the body swapping.
"The subtitles can kill you here, more so than in the first film.
They flash by so quickly.
In addition to the obtuse subtitling, there just plain needs to be
more old fashioned exposition. The fact that Zixia & Lin Qingxia
(the sister of a woman who actually lives in the same body as the
woman herself) are each in control of their singular body at
different times of the day isn't explained so much as implied and,
with all the other things to keep track of, that's laborious.
Especially when, halfway through the film, a magical spell gone
awry switches the minds and bodies of 4 different characters,
including Zixia's/Lin Qingxia's. See, Joker and his two companions,
Pigsy and Sandy, are battling the scorned woman Xiang Xiang, who
has stabbed Zixia. So far, so good. But then Xiang Xiang swaps the
bodies and minds of Pigsy and Zixia with each other before
accidentally swapping her own mind with the body of Sandy's and
Sandy's mind into her own body. But wait! This brawl took place at
night so it wasn't Zixia's mind that was placed into Pigsy's body,
it was Lin Qingxia's! When they awaken the next morning, it turns
out that Zixia's mind now shares her body with Pigsy's mind the way
she used to with Lin Qingxia's mind and that Lin Qingxia's mind,
and not Zixia's mind, is the one that now resides in Pigsy's body.
Now if this weren't bad enough, they see fit to pull yet another
swap while trying to resolve this first one towards the end of the
film. See, a dog interferes with the final swap and so while almost
everyone gets their bodies back, the dog gets Xiang Xiang's mind,
which was in Sandy's body, and Xiang Xiang's body gets Lin
Qingxia's mind, which was in Pigsy's body. Are you following all
that? Do you even remember who Xiang Xiang or Lin Qingxia are to
begin with? And you're just reading a review of this movie, never
mind going out to see the actual film!
And then you have the fact that Joker lied to Lin Qingxia by
telling her that he is in fact not Joker but Broker, his own twin
brother (because he's trying to trick her to help Zixia). When she
says he must be joking, he then concocts another lie by telling her
that his brother is Qin Han and that he is actually called Qin
Xianglin. So Qingxia spends the rest of the movie referring to
Joker as Qin Xianglin. It's suppose to help you distinguish Zixia
from Lin Qingxia, since they both share the same body and thus look
exactly the same, but it's just yet another overly complicated part
of the plot to keep track of. People who aren't following along
carefully will wonder why one single character is being called by
two or three different names at various points in the movie. The
character of Lin Qingxia could be dropped from the film altogether
and half the problems with the story would be immediately solved."
Threads linked to this entry
originally posted by anonymous on 2003-05-20, 4 edits, entryid=3630
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