The Funny Side of Daniel Henney | Clare

The first time I heard about the movie Shanghai Calling I knew that it was a film that I wanted to watch. Daniel Henney doing comedy is a must-watch for me! I know a lot of people are very critical of his acting but in his defense, I believe he just hasn’t been given the right projects. The rom-coms he has been in usually required him to be the straight man to the comedic antics of his female leading lady. The action films that he has been a part of in Hollywood didn’t really call for much in the acting department either. Besides, have any of the critics seen his award-winning portrayal in My Father? Show of hands…well, I rest my case. Unless you’ve seen that I don’t think you can critique his acting skills.

Moving on, Shanghai Calling is a rom-com directed by Daniel Hsia about the lives of Americans in Shanghai. The story centers on Chinese-American lawyer Sam Chao, who is sent by his law firm to start up an office in Shanghai. In spite of his heritage, Sam is more American than Chinese and this leads to several awkward situations as he adjusts to life in the East with his Western way of thinking. The cultural difference (and a lot of arrogance in Sam’s part) causes him to be part of a big legal fiasco that he can only fix if he accepts that he has to do it the Shanghai way. With the help of his two Chinese staff, his American friends and a journalist named Awesome Wang (I know, I know, someone needs to explain this name!) he eventually works things out and ends up loving the place he dreaded going to in the first place.

I found it refreshing to have Daniel being the one with the funny antics and reactions considering he’s almost always the straight man when it comes to things like this in other films and TV shows. He was actually funny! I wasn’t quite sure about the casting of Eliza Coupe as his female lead when I first heard about it because I only know her from her role in Happy Endings but she does justice to her role as the single mom trying to make it in Shanghai.

There were a number of funny moments in the film, I’m just not sure if they’re funny because I get it since I am from Asia (which means I totally get the cultural differences that cause the awkward funny moments) or if it’s because the actors really make the scenes hilarious. Sure it’s not roll-over-the-floor funny, but it does have its moments. The screen capture posted in this entry is one of those moments. It reminds me a lot of the comic moments in Ally McBeal where the character sees something totally different in his/her head than what’s actually happening.

I don’t want to go too much into the funny scenes because it would ruin the experience any first-time viewer of the movie. It’s funny and Dan is effective in it so let’s leave it at that.

One thing that I will go into however is the touch-screen phone featured in the film. It’s about the size of an iPhone and has a feature where you can feel the keys on when you type. I think that’s an interesting concept and I can’t help but wondering if it’s something that already exists now. If yes then it’s a really great phone! It looks pretty good!

For non-gadget fans who are more into Daniel, you will go nuts over the “just-got-out-of-the-shower” scene with his housekeeper in Shanghai. I don’t think any of the girls (and girls at heart) would want to skip that!

This movie has made the rounds of film festivals in the US and other countries and has had a positive reception. From the looks of it though, this movie will go straight to video for many parts of the globe since it’s already available on iTunes. Too bad since I would have wanted to see this in the cinema. Oh well, I’ll take what I can get!