Mr. Go – Review

Wei Wei (Xu Jiao) is a young lady who also happens to be a circus ringmaster and, by extension, the owner of a bat-swinging gorilla. The death of her grandfather leaves her circus and its members in debts, and the circling loan sharks force her to take up the offer for Ling Ling to join the Korean Baseball League. Needless to say, the presence of a 600 pound gorilla can only be good for a baseball team`s popularity.

Mr. Go is a saccharine drama-comedy with little to offer beyond its admittedly imaginative premise.The most impressive thing about the movie are the CGI gorillas which look as close to authentic as one could hope for. Now, if only the same thing could be said for the hokey script.

To illustrate, Mr. Go opens with some cheesy voiceover and a faux documentary vibe to fill in the backstory, a foreboding precursor of the movie`s penchant to tell, rather than show. Things get marginally better from there, but it soon becomes apparent that the script serves mainly to propel the plot forward, without ever making the characters feel fully fleshed out.

Xu Jiao takes on the role of feisty young ringleader gamely enough, but every time she `communicates` with the CGI gorillas -with exaggerated `oohs` and grunts- a small part of one`s soul dies from the cheesiness. Sung Dong-il, who plays machiavellian baseball agent Sung, is more entertaining by far, particularly in a scene where he bonds with Mr. Go over an angst-ridden boozing session.

To be fair, Mr. Go`s baseball sequences are mildly entertaining, even for non-fans, and there are some fairly interesting sequences in its latter half featuring baseball scouts hoping to sign the titular simian. The showdown between Ling Ling and his rival -a more aggressive gorilla called Lei-Ting- is thrilling enough, but not enough to prop up the mediocrity of the rest of the movie.

If novelty value is the main draw for you, Mr. Go may prove to be a passably entertaining experience. But if you have a low threshold for unbridled cheesiness, you may want to give these monkey shenanigans a miss.

(Language: Korean & Mandarin with English & Chinese Subtitles)

Summary: Less fun than a barrel of monkeys
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Raphael Lim