The first thought of knowing there is a new local commercial
flick trying to win audience with toilet humour and other shit just sickens the
mind. Are we that desperate for box-office success that we need to tickle THAT
funny bone? Reading the credits will tell you there are two Jacks involved in
the writing of the film – Jack Sim, Founder of the World Toilet Organisation
and Jack Neo, father of toilet humour (reference: shit bombs in Ah Boys to
Men). How they got together may be either a coincidence or a marketing
strategy. The trailer seemed like a feature-length exercise in shit puns. Even
worse, the toilet plumbing disaster apparent from the trailer reeks of the
moralizing we saw in Ah Boys to Men. Naturally, expectations were lowered as I
entered the cinema.
Surprise! It turned out to be comfortably entertaining. The
cynic in me in helplessly laughed so hard at one point that I felt there is art
and intelligence in crafting commercial-film-style humour. While the film
dances along to the generous peppering with fecal double-entendres,
evenly-spread between English, Mandarin and Hokkien, it is really staying well
afloat on a sturdy story arc.
A civil servant, played by Gurmit Singh, is trying to get
ahead after being stagnant in his job as a hygiene inspector for too long. His
road to success is rocky especially with an unscrupulous colleague, played by
Mark Lee, who overshadows him at board meetings. Running in parallel to the
story of two coffeeshop owners who are a couple, played by getai veterans, Wang
Lei and Liu Ling Ling. Faced with newly-imposed responsibilities from the
Ministry of Toilets, they struggle to keep up with mandatory standards and get
into a citizen-versus-government clash. Also having a narrative arc of its own
is the journey the Minisry of Toilets takes to clean up toilets in Singapore. Together,
these stories intertwine as Singapore attempts to clean up its toilet act.
The film succeeds in co-placing frivolous, unabashed toilet
humour with rather incisive social satire. The Ministry of Toilets was set up
to improve the cleanliness standards of toilets in Singapore. Kumar was
delightfully planted into the role of the Minister of Toilets. Stretching the
‘shit-mileage’ were ridiculous scenes like Kumar wanting to go ‘on-the-ground’
to understand the real problem of dirty toilets. So he took a dump in a
coffeeshop with the act witnessed by a horde of reporters and common people. Then
there was also the anchoring musical number of the movie titled ‘Go in a Rush
also must Flush’ – featured as a campaign song by the Ministry of Toilets done
to the a mish-mash of Bollywood and ‘Glee-dom’. Think *SCAPE-type kids singing
about flushing yr shit like it was a Justin Bieber video.
What the writers of this script have cleverly done is really
weave a satirical take on how the government has been tackling hot button
issues into the film. Minister of Toilets taking a dump in a public coffeeshop
toilet? Some other Minister took a ride on an MRT train to understand the
problem of congestion. Annoying campaign songs, videos and announcements? Why do
they sound so familiar? Townhall meetings where the civil servants can’t deal
with the heat of plebian’s rage and where ‘Enjoy the buffet!’ was hoped as a
convenient closure? Not sure about this in reality but ‘Enjoy the buffet!’ sure
cracked me up! And finally, an anti-campaign video that goes viral (child
YouTube star Dr Jia Jia’s reaction video to the campaign) - almost a mirror of
real cyberspace.
Somehow, director Lee Thean Jean has a golden touch to using
talents. His debut feature film ‘Homecoming’ saw him meld big-time comedic
talents like Jack Neo, Mark Lee, Ah Niu and others into a confidently-paced,
cohesively funny road trip. This time, he worked with Singapore comedic giants
again, including Kumar, Mark Lee, Gurmit Singh, Wang Lei, Liu Ling Ling, Henry
Thia and (for fans of Jack Neo’s comedic entourage) the whole ‘Jack Neo
Academy’ of actors including names like Lao Zabor and Muthu, the famous Indian
security guard. Though uneven and jarring at times (sometimes, the scenes
looked like shouting matches), most of the time, it was a rather palatable
cacophony.
Gurmit’s character John Lu (we wonder if it’s a dig at John
Lui) was also suitably ‘middle-ground’ to lend some balance in the film. He’s
not always funny, it fact seldom. But in his natural and unpretentious style of
playing the lead character, he moves the narrative forward beyond ministry
follies into the familial brushes, taking the film to a more intimate, personal
and less theatrical level.
The final thrust of the story was seeing the country in some
deep shit, pardon the pun. This worked for and against the film
simultaneously. The reckless disposing
of cement into a sewage pipe has caused sewages to ‘go backwards’. Gasp! One
can only imagine the horror of what would ensue and the film was rather graphic
too in its depiction of a ‘reverse flush’ (and mostly coloured in brown –
yikes!). This puts the Ministry of Toilets into deep trouble and in a manner
similar to other national disasters like Singapore’s train stoppage and Orchard
Road flooding, we witness civil servants scuttering around in panic, scrambling
to ‘account’ to the next higher level, ending up eventually with the Prime
Minister on the phone with Minister of Toilets. The stage is set for some
heroism from John to save the day which he does and all ends well with
Singaporeans more mindful in toilet usage.
Depicting a national disaster was certainly a satisfying
payoff to a movie about shit. In the same vein as watch horror or gore or
(pardon the example) porn, the viewer hopes to be rewarded for seeing a
narrative ‘snowball’ at the end. So indeed, there was enough, er shit, to go
around when all hell broke loose. But the
let down is seeing the movie slip into yet another moralizing closure. The
beauty of cinema is seeing life through a filmmaker’s eyes, tinted or naked,
and being able to own those moments or lessons in our own ways. Do we always
need a ‘moral of the story’ ending? With this, I rather remember the Special
Toilet Force (in which Muthu, our favourite security guard is part of) as a
takeaway from the film. Tasked with making your aim correctly at the urinal and
wipe toilet seats, they are omni-present, they literally keep an eye on you
(from the next urinal) and they mean business, real business.
Review by Jeremy Sing
Jeremy Sing is the editor of SINdie
Review by Jeremy Sing
Jeremy Sing is the editor of SINdie