Review: Kelvin Tong’s MEN IN WHITE

Men In White follows the exploits of a group of spirits who share an apartment. They are a hip-hop duo, a badminton champ, a young girl, an elderly lady, a crazy gangster, and a videographer whom we don’t see until the very end, who is also the guy filming everything we see.

The story is told in “chapters”, like a video encyclopedia of what ghosts do, how they do it, and the why’s, where’s and when’s. It’s a pretty nifty way of connecting what is essentially a string of gags that take a while to form into a plot.

One day, a stray ghost somehow finds his way into this endearing and quirky family of ghosts, causing some friction in the family. But trouble really starts when someone buys the empty apartment and prepares to move in. The only thing the ghosts can do is to try and scare the tenant away.

Men In White is what happens when Beetlejuice meets Fight Club meets the frenetic pace of Korean comedies, with a playful jab at long-haired ghosts a la The Ring. It pokes fun at everything Singaporean, from the government’s practice of banning this and fining that, to the way Singaporeans “reserve” tables at a busy restaurant, to the Chinese’s obsession with four-digit lottery. Some of the gags got me scratching my head, perhaps being too rooted in Singaporean mores. Stuff like what the ghosts eat, is very spot-on, that is if you know what the Chinese usually offer to the dead at the prayer altar. A lot of these things will be lost on a foreign audience.

There are some genuinely goofy moments, especially one side-splitting gambling sequence that has the timing down to a perfect second. But for every truly funny joke, is a moment of dead air. That makes the film a rather uneven experience. And what’s more, some people might find some of the jokes rather offensive, especially those concerning Filipino maids, immigrant workers, and gay people. These are played as over-the-top stereotypes, and these moments are sure to generate either some really uncomfortable laughter, or disgusted shakes of the head.

But the film makes no apologies for its frequent descent into juvenile humour and scatological jokes. It even admits so in the opening scene, with a warning flashed brightly across the screen, a move that in itself is equally juvenile, just so you know where the film will be headed. But the biggest problem with it is that Tong is largely unable to sustain the frantic energy so needed for this brand of comedy. Despite some good long takes of lightning repartee between the characters, a lot of the time you’re just left to wonder what’s coming up next when the gags take a breather. And that shouldn’t happen. The quieter moments feel like mere fillers, as do some of the music video sequences.

As a result, Men In White doesn’t really feel like a complete movie experience, but more like a bunch of skits, of which you’ll remember the best ones and you’d want to quickly forget the rest. It’s a real perforated experience that’s memorable for both the right and wrong reasons. It’s silly, infantile and ridiculous, but it’s also sometimes very, very funny.