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 ly Me to Polaris is a Hong Kong remake of the 1978
Warren Beatty movie Heaven Can Wait, which was itself a remake of the
1941 movie Here Comes Mister Jordan. Chris Rock would later redo the formula in
Down
to Earth in 2001 with mixed results. All 4 movies have essentially the
same basic premise and plot points: A nice guy dies accidentally, is given the
chance to return to Earth in a new body, and pursues a woman who despises him in
his new form.
Fly Me to Polaris stars Richie Ren in the
dead-guy-come-back-to-Earth role. He plays Onion, a blind and mute in-patient at
a hospital where he's cared for by the kind and adoring Autumn (Cecilia Cheung).
When he gets run over by a car, Onion goes to a waiting room and is destined for
a place called Polaris, but also while there Onion learns that he's won some
kind of celestial lottery that entitles him to make one wish guaranteed to come
true. Onion asks to return to Earth in order to pursue Autumn, of course. His
wish is granted, but with stipulations: no one will recognize him in his new
body and he can't tell anyone who he used to be. Once he returns to Earth, Onion
(now going by Cheuk) discovers that winning over the woman of his dreams is
harder than he first thought, especially when a Doctor is also wooing her...
Fly Me to Polaris has one big, glaring fault: it has
no other subplot save the romance angle. Even Chris Rock's Down
to Earth gave us a subplot involving Rock as a black man who dreams of being a
stand up comedian and who returns into the body of an old rich white man.
Beatty's Heaven Can Wait
had Beatty as an athlete obsessed with going to
the Superbowl who returns into the body of a despicable millionaire married to a
woman plotting to kill him with her lover. The love angle for both movies were
subplots that eventually won out, but there was always that other thing on the
side to occupy our time if ever we should get bored of the romance.
The problem with Fly Me to Polaris is that there is
no other subplot -- the film is essentially a one-trick pony, and the trick
isn't all that interesting for an hour and a half. The result is that if you
happen to find the romance to be not all that interesting, then you're out of
luck. After Cheuk's 3rd or 4th or even 5th
attempt to convince Autumn (to no avail) that he's Onion and that he's in love
with her, I started to zone out. Perhaps this type of bubblegum romance could
hold the attention of a 12-year old girl for 90 minutes, but unfortunately I'm
in the wrong age group as well as being the wrong gender.
Richie Ren does a good job in his leading man role, but he's
so much more interesting as the blind and mute Onion in the beginning. It
doesn't help that Cheuk doesn't have anything very interesting to say, which is
probably why Cecelia Cheung's Autumn didn't care for him at all, and continues
not to until the very end when his true identity is finally revealed and the
movie thankfully wraps itself up before the credits roll. Cecelia Cheung once
again stars in a non-harmful mainstream romance film, something she has been
playing quite a bit of late. She's got the role down pat, mostly because she
plays the same role so many times (with the exception of the South Korean film Failan,
which continues to be her best role to date).
One of the film's biggest drawback is that the writer(s) fail to capitalize on what could have been
an interesting interlude -- that is, Onion's visit to Heaven's waiting room.
Instead of giving us the Chinese interpretation of Heaven, Onion goes up there
for about a minute, sits on a chair, stands, and returns back down to Earth a
minute later. So much could have been done with that sequence that it's a big
disappointment the movie just glossed over it. What? That's it?
Fly Me to Polaris will be remembered for completely
ignoring everything in favor of its very lacking romance. Director Jingle Ma tries to make up for the movie's uninvolving plot with
an overbearing
soundtrack that tries to drown us with fluffy pop tunes and romance tracks,
probably hoping to distract us. As a plus, Ma and cinematographer Kwong-hung
Chan's camerawork was
very good, and the film had a nice polished and dreamy quality to it, in
particular during the night scenes.
As a movie, Fly Me to Polaris will fail to entertain
anyone over 12 and who isn't a girl prone to bouts of "He's so dreamy"
gushing. The rest of us will have to rely on Beatty's Heaven Can Wait or
even (gulp) Chris Rock's
Down to Earth, which by comparison is far
superior to this piece of mindless fluff.
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