🎥 Movies of 2021, 77: Mismatched Couples. Taken by itself, Mismatched Couples is largely plotless, chaotic, frequently dated/offensive, and fun-as-hell mismash of breakdancing, romance, and more breakdancing. Even by the broadest standards of broad Hong Kong comedies this movie is a wild ride. Half of it will blow your eyeballs off while the other half will make you groan in dismay. You’d be hard pressed to see anything else like it.
But I wasn’t watching this movie in isolation. I was watching it as part of my Yuen Woo Ping retrospective. And taken in the context of Yuen’s career I think Mismatched Couples is pretty interesting!
This was the 11th film directed by Yuen Woo Ping in 7 years. He’d launched the career of Jackie Chan and helped kick off the Kung Fu Comedy genre. Everything must have been going great, right?
This is mostly theorizing on my part, but I don’t think things were going well. After 1981’s Dreadnaught, Yuen only worked with smaller budget studios. And he kept recycling a lot of the same ideas with the same actors. He was successful enough to keep getting work, but he wasn’t making hits (judging by the box office reports on hkmdb.com).
Part of the reason for Yuen’s lack of hits may have been the shifting Hong Kong film market. Yuen had worked in HK film for over 20 years, and during that time the industry was largely dominated by martial arts films, first swordplay and then kung fu. But in the early 80s this began to shift and modern-day action began to dominate. Jackie Chan released Police Story in 1985. And A Better Tomorrow would come out the following year.
So here’s Yuen Woo Ping, making movies that show off his hard-earned skills and the industry, seemingly, didn’t respond.
And then Donnie Yen appears. He is a generational talent. Massively charismatic and astounding physicality. He’s 20 years old and ready to become a star. He and Yuen Woo Ping clearly got along. 4 of Yen’s first 5 movies were directed by Yuen Woo Ping. He clearly wants to work with the guy.
In Yuen you have an industry veteran who is not being loved by the business that he so clearly loves. And in Yen you have a star-in-waiting who wants to show off his skills. And this odd couple needs to find a way to work together.
Which is, basically, the plot of Mismatched Couples. Yuen stars as classically-trained Chinese Opera performer who finds himself out of work and money. Yen is a brash, breakdancing, charismatic kid. The two, somehow, become friends and have a series of increasingly weird adventures.
I think the two of them looked at the film market of 1985, looked at Donnie Yen’s skills and said “Fuck it, let’s go all in.” And they made a relentlessly modern comedy in which Donnie Yen constantly shows off how goddamn amazing he is. There’s a heartwarming amount of trust and bravery here. Yuen throwing out 20+ years of genre knowledge and Donnie Yen diving full-hearted into the most batshit comedy bits.
As weird and confusing as this movie is I don’t think that anyone can say that the makers half-assed it.
It didn’t work, though. The movie made some money, but about the same amount as Yuen’s previous movies. Only ¼ of what Police Story made in the same year. Donnie Yen took a break from films to train, before returning in 1988’s Tiger Cage (directed by Yuen Woo Ping) and starting a successful career. Yuen Woo Ping would also take a break, directing only one movie between 1986 and 1988 (for a guy that directed 11 movies in 7 years, this counts a break). Like Yen, Yuen Woo Ping’s career would take off after Tiger Cage leading to some of the classics of ‘90s HK cinema. Mismatched Couples may not have been a success, but I love it for trying.
