Hanson and the Beast ป่วนหัวใจยัยปีศาจ (2017) [พากย์ไทย]

Xiao Yang’s Hanson and the Beast follows Yuan Shuai, aka Hanson (William Feng), a failed actor who is now neck deep in debt after taking a hefty loan to direct his own film and getting scammed. Now he’s trying to find himself a rich wife through a matchmaking service, while literally shoveling at a zoo that his now clinically insane father used to own. During a matchmaking date, he meets Bai Xianchu (Liu Yifei), who immediately reveals to him that she’s a fox demon, part of a tribe of animal demons that assume human form to dwell in our world. Hanson saved her life as a kid, when she was a little fox trapped in his father’s zoo and bullied by other kids. Now, she has found him again by chance and is in love with him, despite the warnings of her childhood friend – and cat demon – Hong Sicong (Guo Jingfei). For such a love is strictly forbidden by the commissioner of their tribe, Yun Zhonghe (Li Guangjie), who offers Hanson mountains of cash, provided that he inject her with poison and deliver her to him.

A modern-day riff on the classic trans-species love stories of Chinese fairy tales, such as Painted Skin (here constantly referred to in a meta way, as the filming of a Painted Skin 8 factors in the story) or Madame White Snake , but with a dash of Men in Black thrown in (secret operatives making sure humans remain unaware of the otherworldly dwellers among them), Hanson and the Beast is an often unsightly film, lit in gaudy pastels and neons, and full of unconvincing make up (we mean the creature make up, not Guo Jingfei’s cringe-worthy eyeliner) and jerky, weightless CGI. Its forced, artificial love story – she enters the picture already fully lovestruck, and he falls for her after she stalks him, mauls him while in her fox shape, and comes close to prostitution to help him pay his debt – is difficult to root for, though the relentlessly, unabashedly silly humour can be fairly amusing. In the end, the film is kept afloat – barely – by Liu Yifei, who moves with unexpected agility between weirdness, cuteness, bestiality and tragedy. She is well-matched by William Feng, who’s sympathetic and makes a fool of himself with amusing abandon, and Li Guangjie, quite charismatic as the prancing bad guy.