Holiday in Chengdu (2023)

not one boring moment

When I clicked open this movie I did not expect much. Even for the first third of the movie I thought it was be pretty predictable but to my surprise it turned around to be quite funny, healing, cheeky and overall entertaining.

The synopsis is pretty vague and does not represent the movie accurately in my opinion.
Both leads are not that young anymore, while he had been turned down in love and gave up on his music career, the FL has been in jail the past year. All in all I would say the story is non linear and not every plot point and the history behind that is fully explained. If this was a drama that would be a negative, but since this is a rom-com with 120 minutes run time, I don't see much fault in that. The typical tropes like "fake dating", "fake pregnancy", "ex comes back" might make you want to stay away and think it's melo but instead of doubling down on these tags, the movie uses those terms as additives. They don't define the entire story only parts of it and the main characters grow around them. To put it simply, one second it might seem the rest of the movie is going to be set in a certain place but a few minutes later everything is different.
Both leads have a difficult past and let go of that together over the course of the movie. Especially the ML has some touching moments later on.

As mentioned earlier I especially liked the second half, it had me laughing quite a few times. For a Chinese Movie it shows quite a bit of skin and is more raunchy than a more conservative movie. I mean the fact that the FL beats up guys, was in prison and has a back tattoo already gives you a little bit of a hint that there won't be a damsel in distress. I also liked it's fast pace but also many original scenes. Whether funny or sad moments, the actors had good chemistry and delivered a good performance.

But of course it's not a perfect movie. At certain points earlier on I found the ML a bit sleezy and the FL got sexualized a bit too much by the writers but it got better later on when the focus shifted on comedy and healing. The "not one boring moment" title could also hint at something not perfect since the movie does a lot, almost too much, in a short period of time and you don't always know the reason or where certain people came from.
Lastly, I really liked the ending. Funny and also wholesome... also shows that there are people who will accept your past and not judge you based on that.

I think it's entertaining and I don't really rate movies strictly, so for me it was funny and cheeky and that is good enough for me.
I would recommend the movie, especially since there are not a lot of odd pairing romcoms of mainland china that have leads that aren't in their 20s anymore.

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