Summary
A shameless love letter to (Taiwanese) television, this is a slightly bonkers (in all the right ways) comedy that makes you kind of wish that Crazy TV was a station we could tune into right now.
Kids, there was a time when people sat down and watched television at the same time. Before streaming, VOD, DVR, home media, and the Internet, there was a thing called appointment television. When M*A*S*H ended in 1983, more than 105 million people tuned in to see it.
While not all of us will have grown up specifically with Taiwanese television, there’s a fondness for a bygone era of TV that director Hsieh Nien Tsu evokes in IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD SHOW (瘋狂電視台). While the title might recall a certain Stanley Kramer film from 1963, the film more closely resembles a cross between Wayne’s World (or UHF depending on your vintage) and The Producers.
In the film, Mr. Lo is the owner of Crazy TV, a character of low moral fibre who wants to destroy the channel’s ratings so that he can sell it on the cheap to mob boss Mr. David. After promoting the failing producer Yeh (O.D) to producer, he and his actress friend Diva (Lim Min Chen) create a series of esoteric shows that start to connect with the public. From then on, Lo tries anything to undermine the unexpected success of his station.
A colourful explosion of ideas, as the name of the film would imply, it’s entirely possible that your visual cortex will be overloaded in the consumption of this movie. In one moment we’re bearing witness to a children’s show with “dancing” rabbits, and in the next it’s a dance sequence that blends reality and fiction. In fact, at times it feels as though you’re watching a marathon episode of Yo Gabba Gabba infused with action news.
Much of the success of the film, like the fictional Crazy TV, comes from earnestness of the two leads. O.D and Lim Min Chen are inevitably being set up for a kind of romance amidst all the insanity, and the two of them are both likeable on screen together. If anything, both of them are fairly two-dimensional in their character outlook, but it’s impossible not to get caught up in their energy.
The final act takes a seriously dark turn away from the madcap vibes of the rest of the film, a hostage situation that could have been lifted out of any of the vintage sitcoms that it so admires. It doesn’t entirely work, but it crecalls the same dramatic immediacy that we saw in Network (1976). It all serves to remind us what television looked liked once upon a time, and how much effort goes in behind the scenes. Yeh’s dream may be a long forgotten way of entertainment, but there’s still a passion for telling stories and audiences willing to see them.
2019 | Taiwan | DIR: Isshin Inudo| WRITERS: Akihiro Dobashi | CAST: Na Dou, Liu Kuang Ting, Lim Min Chen, Ou Han Sheng | DISTRIBUTOR: Taiwan Film Festival in Sydney (AUS), NYAFF (US) | RUNNING TIME: 102 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 July 2019 (TWFF)
