Shanghai Kiss

Being a young daughter, I often listened to my classmates discuss their music and movie crushes as well as the intends to eventually marry them in huge weddings with lots of photographers and celebrities present. First it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas, it was the Backstreet Boys, then it was Leonardo DiCaprio. I usually felt various and omitted. For some reason (perhaps since the majority of of my male classmates and my first crush were Chinese. I’m still wanting for an AMWF romance here!) I recently never found myself desirous of the identical individuals who my classmates drooled over, as I wanted an AMWF romanceI thought white guys looked strange. Besides Mulan’s ever-delicious Shang, I never really found any male characters who piqued my interest.

AMWF Romance

Whenever a friend told me about Shanghai Kiss as well as the AMWF relationship in it, I used to be skeptical at first. I’d seen Hiroshima Mon Amour and Anna and also the King, but them was terribly modern and that i couldn’t relate to them. I hadn’t yet seen an AMWF relationship that felt believable if you ask me, one that I possibly could have observed myself in. But then while i started watching Shanghai Kiss I had been a bit more hopeful. Ken Leung was good-looking and i also recognized Hayden Panettiere from her spitfire Remember the Titans days. Ken Leung I did not quite so readily recognize until I watched Rush Hour the following day; he plays fault an evil henchman and has had minor successes since that time (Law and Order, Lost, Saw).

AMWF Romance

Panettiere and Leung were phenomenal selections for the characters of Liam Liu and Adelaide Bourbon. They worked very well together right from the start as well as their dialogue didn’t seem forced, which is often a problem for movies billed as romantic comedies. Leung’s Liam Liu comes across as awkward and unsure of himself, whereas Panettiere’s Adelaide is nearly nauseatingly bubbly. Two in direct contrast personalities, and yet I came across myself wanting to see them succeed being a couple. I thought i was going to watch the development of a believable AMWF relationship that will finally set aside my girlhood belief that I was strange for having fallen madly deeply in love with a Chinese boy when I was eight.



That is… Until it became clear that Adelaide only agreed to be sixteen and Liam was in his late twenties. That’s right, this “romantic comedy” is not made out of the standard recipe of two thirty-somethings realizing their differences and joining together in a amusing fashion. Actually, after the initial scenes I used to be left wondering how Shanghai Kiss might have been billed as a romantic comedy in any way. It looked to me like Adelaide was seriously crushing around the cool, older guy and that he only agreed to be humoring her because she designed for interesting company. The age difference was a recurring joke throughout the movie, references to potential jail time included.



It quickly became apparent that Shanghai Kiss was less about Liam and Adelaide’s questionable friendship and much more about Liam’s development like a man. Liam was made to leave behind the bubbly and overattached Adelaide to get a vacation to Shanghai. From this part of the show it had become apparent that Liam was wanting to distance himself from his heritage around humanly possible, so that it came as no surprise in my experience which he left for Shanghai only for the possibility monetary benefit and never while he actually wanted anything to do with his family.



It’s well known that does not every first-generation American connects well along with his or her culture and upbringing, and i also cannot personally really fault someone because of not becoming an adult fobby like his parents. Liam is so not even close to anything Shanghainese i could have believed you in the event you told me he was adopted by white people as a kid. However, when it came time for Liam’s Shanghai trip I'd gone from loving his character and planning to see him succeed to actually despising him and telling myself i wasn’t surprised he was so unsuccessful in your life. I was thinking which he was lazy, incompetent, inconsiderate, the epitome of stereotypical American behavior facing unfamiliar and foreign situations.



But his initially stereotypical American-type behavior forms the cornerstone for your beauty of his character’s development. I don’t want to explore way too many details and ruin the show, but Liam’s time in Shanghai transforms him in the typical, rude American tourist i want to hate in to a character that i'm again rooting for. He constitutes a few completely selfless decisions that will entirely change people’s lives, decisions that I’m unsure I really could make myself basically were because situation. The rude American stereotype probably has a very good reason for existing, but it’s refreshing to see that turnaround.



Adelaide does eventually find her way back into the story and back to Liam’s life, but not in how i could have hoped. Despite how old they are difference, I needed hoped to find out more development in the Liam/Adelaide relationship than I had been given. I’m left with more questions than answers. Liam finally realizes the error of his ways and wishes to help other people realize their dreams, but think about his or her own? After it is all totally said and done, that is Adelaide and just what does she mean to him? It’s refreshing to see a show where it is the white character that is the accessory to the Asian star and not the other way around, however be interested in Liam and Adelaide grow into something substantial. The moviegoer is left seeing the beginnings of what might develop into a friendship, a romantic relationship, or you never know what else.



I need to give Shanghai Kiss four out of five joss sticks mainly because of that. I enjoy that it’s the Asian man that is finally the star. I enjoy which he actually shows progression of character and doesn’t remain as some shallow, stereotypical bit part. I really like that he is shown as some average man who isn’t tied to Asian women. I especially love that I am capable of watch an Asian male character inside a modern setting who I possibly could reasonably become considering basically would see him inside the streets of my native Atlanta… however need to see more than I'm given. I'm such as the movie ended way too soon that i can get a few things i wanted out from the story.



I highly recommend the film as it’s an infrequent bit of genuinely positive character development, but be prepared to feel like stuff has been left short.