I went into Twins Effect 2 expecting to hate it. The cast? Annoying Hong Kong pop idols, mostly (the Twins themselves are all right, but pretty boys like Edison Chen and clueless knobs like Jaycee Chan make me want to puke). The plot? Comic fantasy crap, set in some distant past -- confusingly, the only thing it has in common with the first film (which was about killing vampires in modern-day Hong Kong) is the title. Moreover, the Twins have a pretty lousy track record when it comes to the movies they've both starred in: Summer Breeze of Love and Just One Look aren't totally awful, but Death Curse and Fantasia are absymal; the first Twins Effect, meanwhile, though I personally found it pretty entertaining, wasn't exactly brilliant cinema. So I wasn't counting on liking this movie at all.

And I didn't. It's an overly flashy, charmless bore of a film. Unlike Ant, though (who always gets a thoroughly disgusted look on his face whenever the movie is mentioned) I couldn't really bring myself to hate it. Sure, the plot is ridiculous, and it's crawling with pretty boys, and there isn't any real depth or intelligence to it...but it's also pretty obvious that the film wasn't intended to be all that substantive. It was, I'm fairly certain, produced specifically with Hong Kong mallrats in mind, who probably wanted little more from the movie than to see their favorite idols yukking it up on the big screen. The results aren't pretty, but it's not something I can really passionately hate. It just is what it is: a dumb teeny bopper movie.





A title card gives us a little background: apparently, in ancient times, there was a country full of "Amazons" near China. As per the instructions of their evil, jilted queen, the women of this country have enslaved all of their men; men are subsequently called "dumbbells" because of the chains and cowbells they are forced to wear. Slave auctions abound -- in fact, the movie (perhaps fearing that we'll forget what we've just been informed of) begins with one.

We're introduced to a young woman called "13th Young Master" (Charlene Choi), a slavemaster who sells men. In the middle of her auction, a mysterious figure in black appears and wreaks havoc in the town square, allowing most of her slaves to escape. Annoyed, 13YM gets into a totally pointless and ostentatious fight with Blue Bird (Gillian Chung), whom she accuses of letting her slaves escape or something (like I said, it's pointless). Blue Bird works for the evil queen as a spy of some kind; after the scuffle in the marketplace, she's told to go find a plaque that was stolen (by Ed Chen's character, whose name is "Peachy") from the queen's secret chamber. 13YM, meanwhile, is given her own mission: the fat woman she owes money to wants her to find a man that she's taken a fancy to. Both 13YM and Blue Bird end up at some outdoor circus headed by Master Blackwood (Tony Leung Kar Fai); from there, we're introduced to Blockhead (Wilson Chen) and Charcoal Head (Jaycee Chan), a pair of morons who work at the circus.

Ed Chen also works there. He plans to give the plaque he stole from the queen (which is actually a map) to the mysterious guy in black we met at the beginning, whose name happens to be Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Donnie Yen). Uh, sure. Anyway, some troops arrive to break up the circus, and the group scatters: Ed Chen (mercifully, for the audience) gets killed, and Blockhead and Charcoal Head end up with the plaque. Blue Bird and 13YM catch up with them later.

The misadventures of these four kids comprise most of the rest of the movie, as they use the plaque/map to search for Excalibur, a magic sword that, when wielded by the right dude, will spell doom for the evil queen and restore the Amazon country to a patriarchal kingdom where men have equal rights (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is a part of this effort). 13YM falls in love with Blockhead, and Blue Bird falls in love with...shudder...Jaycee Chan's character.





Towards the end, the foursome enter a temple, and Donnie Yen has a pointless and inelegant fight with Jackie Chan, who appears in the film as some kind of temple guardian. Remarkably, it's at this point we learn that Charcoal Head (Jaycee Chan, who has about as much on-screen charisma as the guy who sells Cortislim in those bothersome commercials) is the film's ultimate hero: he's the guy destined to kill the queen with Excalibur. Jaycee Chan is the hero! Ugh!

Eventually, of course, there's a big battle against the evil queen, who at one point uses her magic to cause the men who oppose her to grow breasts (in a scene I desperately wish I could somehow erase from my memory). There's a bunch of wire-fu fights (inexpertly done, for the most part; the Twins are multi-talented, but the martial arts, I fear, are beyond them) and lots of flashy special effects, some of which look all right, but most of which look dopey and cartoony. Blue Bird comes around to the good side, Blockhead and 13YM become the new king and queen, blah blah blah.

The movie is disappointing: it's rife with bad acting (this is Jaycee Chan's acting debut, it should be noted; he's a dope, but I don't want to be too hard on the guy), a dumb plot reminiscent of a Xena: Warrior Princess episode, and numerous lackluster fight scenes. The Twins are cute, obviously, but even they couldn't save this sucker. It's a bad, bad movie, and I'm sick of writing about it, so I think I'll just end this review right here and go do something more constructive with my time.

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