Jason says: “I’m not
going to sugar coat this – MR. GO is not the best possible movie that
could be made about a gorilla that plays professional baseball. It’s
got some real problems. But barring this one doing well enough to bring
forth SON OF MR. GO it’s likely the only one we’re going to get, and if
gorillas playing professional baseball sounds like something you’d
like, MR. GO certainly has its moments.
“Plains gorilla Ling Ling doesn’t go straight to the Korean Baseball
Organization, of course; he starts out in a Chinese circus, although
when the ringmaster who trained him died in the Yilin earthquake, it
leaves his granddaughter Zhao Weiwei (Jiao Xu) a million dollars in
debt to banker Lin Xiaogang (Kim Hee-won). Enter perennial KBO doormat
the Doosan Bears and mercenary agent Sung Chung-su (Sung Dong-il), who
manage to sign the power-hitting ape as a DH/pinch-hitter for the
season’s second half, with Weiwei coming to South Korea as his handler.
Of course, Sung just sees the KBO as a stepping-stone, and Lin means to
get his money one way or the other, even if it involves Leiting, the
circus’s other, less friendly, mountain gorilla.
“MR. GO has a script that falters in a number of ways that seem rather
obvious – for instance, the entire Bears team is basically extras
rather than characters, and it seems like some material about how the
players and coaches react to having a 300kg gorilla and his 15-year-old
girl handler in the dugout might make it into the movie, but there’s
nothing. The last-act machinations around potentially selling Ling
Ling’s services to a Japanese team may be true to what being a fan of
the KBO is like, but it’s boring, not about any character in whom the
audience has any interest. And when you get right down to it, I’m not
sure what it’s supposed to be about in terms of theme. That it takes a
gorilla for Sung to learn not to treat ballplayers as property? Maybe,
but what it’s doing with Weiwei is all over the map.
Screenwriter/director Kim Yong-hwa will have scenes about how she’s
still a kid and in over her head, and then reward her immature
outburst, or build up how she shouldn’t trust Sung and then have the
only way forward be to do exactly that. It makes the movie feel like
it’s pushing against itself needlessly when there’s absolutely nothing
wrong with a movie for kids about gorillas playing baseball having a
simple moral lesson to it rather than complexity or, perish the
thought, realism.
“After all, when the movie is just having fun with the obvious comedy
involved with Ling Ling standing in the batter’s box and clobbering
baseballs, it’s really easy to enjoy. Director Kim gives the audience
what it wants, whether it’s balls hit a cartoonishly long distance or
the local ESPN commentators dropping information that they learned
watching the National Geographic channel the night before into their
analysis. A big part of what makes MR. GO work as well as it does is
that Kim never takes this for granted – any scene that has a gorilla in
it has the human cast acting at least justifiably wary even when
there’s no physical comedy going on; in fact, some of the funniest bits
in that regard are practically in the background as crazy things happen
on the TVs over characters’ shoulders.
“And let it be said that the visual effects are almost certainly the
best yet done in a movie that didn’t have Hollywood backing. Ling Ling
and Leiting are fantastically rendered creatures, with Ling Ling in
particular very expressive. The animators at Dexter Digital know both
their strengths and limitations, and the movie has been designed to
take these into account well enough that there are a few spectacular
sequences putting Ling Ling through his paces even if there are
relatively few that have direct, complex interaction between people and
gorillas. The movie was shot in native 3D, and looks good projected
that way, although 2D viewing will mostly lose baseballs being hit
directly at the camera.
“The human cast may not be given the greatest material to work with,
but they pull their end. Weiwei’s character arc may be a mess, but Jiao
Xu – so great in STARRY,
STARRY NIGHT – is almost always able to connect with the audience,
even when Weiwei is kind of bratty. Sung Dong-il is at his best when he
gets to be entirely sincere or obnoxious, but doesn’t do as well when
he’s in a gray area. Kim Hee-won is an amusing villain, and Joe Odagiri
a fun guest star of sorts as the owner of one of the NPB teams looking
to sign Ling Ling.
“MR. GO isn’t that good a movie; you could probably make an easy
argument for knocking the cat rating below down a notch. But as someone
who likes baseball and likes absurd things like gorillas playing the
game, I have to admit that the filmmakers delivered what I wanted often
enough that I enjoyed the experience, even if it isn’t the great
baseball-playing gorilla movie I wanted it to be. 2.75 cats
“Seen 25 July 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival,
Xpand 3D)” |
