2171. Mr. Pride vs Miss Prejudice (傲娇与偏见) (2017)

Starring: Dilraba Dilmurat, Leon Zhang, Gao Weiguang

Director: Huang Yanwei, Li Hai-shu

Running Time: 108 mins

Mr. Pride vs Miss Prejudice is a Chinese film about a young woman who comes across a rich heir, and after clashing initially, they grow closer, albeit amidst a series of complications and bizarre situations.

I didn’t like this film. At all. While it’s a simple and stupid romantic comedy, I couldn’t find any enjoyment in Mr. Pride vs Miss Prejudice, due to a total lack of intelligent or entertaining humour, along with very annoying characters and some rather vulgar flaunting of wealth, all of which comes together to make both a tedious and often unpleasant watch.

Now, formulaic romantic comedies have never been my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean that I’m completely impervious to enjoying them. In fact, some of my favourite films follow a very generic romance story, and it’s a timeless premise that can work brilliantly if done right.

However, this film doesn’t even come close to doing that. While its loud and manic comedy or its sappy romance may prove entertaining to some, I found the combination both infuriating and tedious. Above all, the film makes no attempt to even introduce any unpredictability into the mix, with the love triangle that emerges in its second act feeling both forced and completely unnecessary.

From the start, the general path that the film is set to take is completely predictable, and I felt fully bored within ten minutes of starting the movie. Of course, a little bit of perseverence has seen many other films rectify poor openings with riveting twists, but that’s not the case here, as it plods along with its pointless and endlessly generic story right the way through.

Secondly, the total lack of likable or even moderately interesting characters makes this film all the more unpleasant. I’ve sat through countless rom-coms with boring stories and generic characters, but provided that they’re completely neutral personalities, I can look past the flaws to occasionally enjoy the cheesy story.

In the case of this film, however, you can’t view it is as a sit-back-and-relax experience because the main characters are so annoying from the start. Whether it’s the constant and pointless bickering during the opening act, the vulgar flamboyance halfway through, or their generally unlikable personalities, there’s nothing that would make you want to really care about these people, and as such, it’s almost impossible to really find any interest in the story at hand.

However, there are times when an irritating film can still be salvaged somewhat by good comedy. But guess what? There’s no good comedy here. Much like its story, the humour here is very predictable and very generic, meaning that punchlines come to mind right at the set-up of a joke, or simple toilet/gross-out humour is used by the film to get a cheap and almost always unearned laugh.

From the manic opening scene, I found myself annoyed and frustrated by the movie, and its lack of humour did little to pull me away from that sentiment, leaving me more and more annoyed and bored by the generic and pointless nature of the film, which is why I’m giving Mr. Pride vs Miss Prejudice a 4.9 overall, and suggesting that you steer as clear as possible away from it.