New Year Throwback
They don’t make them like this much anymore. Whether that’s a shame or a blessing depends on your POV.
The Snowball on a Sunny Day
Director: Philip Yung • Writer: Gabriel Ng, Philip Yung
Starring: Chung Suet-ying, Elaine Jin, Jiro Lee, Harriet Yeung, Edan Lui
Hong Kong • 2hrs 12mins
Opens Hong Kong February 13 • IIB
Grade: C
You know how movies often make no sense, and you just blow that off because movie? No one is jumping to hyperspace, or opening a jump gate, or building a person from the parts of other dead people, or making a mess of someone’s expensive suit in a coffee shop and finding true love for it. It’s nonsense, and it makes no sense but we go with these flows because movie. If we’re lucky the filmmaker – or writer, artist, lyricist – is making a larger point or spinning an incredible yarn that makes idiocy worthwhile. At the very least there’s a foundation of internal logic upon which to build this idiocy.
Such is not the case in The Snowball on a Sunny Day | 金多寶.
Now, Philip Yung Chi-kwong knows how to make a film. His breakout Port of Call’s hyper-stylised visuals made the grimy world of the murder victim feel immersive, and Papa was an effectively realised, quiet portrait of trauma and forgiveness; hopefully his forthcoming transgender drama Cyclone will be similarly astute. But Snowball is the kind of messy, thrown-together filler that makes you think someone, somewhere, has revenge porn of Yung locked and ready to upload. But, lo! He co-wrote this unfunny baffler with first time feature writer Gabriel Ng Jo-him, a wannabe throwback to peak CNY Hong Kong comedies – the All’s Well, Ends Wells, the The Eagle Shooting Heroeses, the Fat Choi Spirits. This is not those. All that said, chances are I’m in the minority on this one. Sweet and optimistic aren’t really my jam, so for anyone looking for some warm and fuzzy family connection, logic be damned, will be well served by The Snowball on a Sunny Day. There’s nothing cheap about the film; production values are strong, it’s bright and, erm, sunny, and the cast uniformly commits to the bit.
Just, no
In a nutshell: Muiday (Elaine Jin Yan-ling) is a beloved elderly woman living in a small public housing flat with her granddaughter Sunnie (Chung Suet-ying, Another World), a film worker of some kind. She’s been there for ages, since her parents, cabbie dad Ken Lam (Jiro Lee Sheung-shing, Measure in Love) and mom Charlotte (Harriet Yeung Sze-man, Finch & Midland), split and Charlotte chose to focus on Sunnie’s special needs little brother Harry (Marek Li Hoi-lam). Evidently she only has bandwidth for one child at a time. Coming up on Lunar New Year Eve, Muiday reminds Sunnie to pick up her lottery ticket for the big holiday Snowball Draw, using the same numbers she’s been using for 34 years. Naturally, Muiday’s numbers come up this time, they win the $80 million jackpot – and Sunnie forgot to play. Uh oh. So instead of just saying she forgot to play, or better still buying them on the app so she doesn’t even have to go into a Jockey Club shop, she lets the increasingly forgetful Muiday and the rest of the family live like the sudden multi-millionaires they aren’t and move into a fancy villa Sunnie’s PA pal Jay Lai (Edan Lui Cheuk-on) is housesitting for. The villa even comes with a dog. Gee, do you think living the lie will somehow stitch the family back together, stoke forgiveness and honesty and heal broken relationships? Is it possible somehow, someway, Muiday actually did get a lottery ticket? It’s a CNY movie. It will have a happy ending.
And for a change predictability isn’t the problem. Like a rom-com, this brand of CNY family comedy has to meet certain beats and go down certain paths to fulfil its mission, and that’s fine. The best ones (see: above) play the game but bend the rules. Snowball simply disposes with the shred of sensibility needed to make the silliness work. Where did Muiday’s downstairs neighbour (Nina Paw Hei-ching) – set up to be a significant or meaningful B storyline – vanish to? Why does Sunnie need to work in the movies, and what’s with all the distracting meta references to filmmaking? Why did we need to endure the final segment (you’ll see)? What kind of camera department pro DOESN’T make sure there’s a memory card in the damn camera? Maybe this is why the industry is in the state it’s in. Above all what did Sunnie think she was accomplishing by lying at this level? These aren’t nonsense issues that can be blown off; they’re fundamental to story structure, and no number of bit parts from Lawrence Lau Sek-yin, Charlene Choi Chuek-yin, Jo Kok Cho-lam, Wong Yau-nam and Louis Koo Tin-lok (because of course) are going to help cover up the disorder. No surprise, Jin is the MVP here, against all odds giving Muiday a contented warmth that serves as the film’s emotional engine. Chung’s exaggerated mugging, however, obscures any personality beyond foolish brat, and drags on a movie that’s too long. The Snowball on a Sunny Day is like a Marvel movie. We all know what to expect, it mostly delivers, and if it’s precisely the tonic you need on February 17 no one would blame you for going back for seconds.