REVIEW / COMEDY
DIDI'S DREAMS (PG)
91 minutes/Opens tomorrow/ 3 stars
The story: Aspiring actress Didi (Dee Hsu) will stop at nothing to prove her talent, especially in front of her superstar sister Lingling (Lin Chi-ling). After returning home from her many auditions, she looks forward to going to bed and dreaming about her alter-ego, a respected noodle seller in space.
If fans of the now-defunct Taiwanese entertainment talk show Mr Con & Ms Csi still feel like its finale last year was too abrupt, this movie serves as the proper closure they have been looking for.
Everything about the film is a clear tribute to the beloved series, from the inside jokes about celebrities and show business, to all the cameos by the show's most frequent guest stars such as Evonne Sie and Chen Han-dian.
Even the casting of Taiwanese supermodel Lin Chi-ling here is deliberate, given how she was often verbally "attacked" by host Dee Hsu on the show for being more beautiful than her.
But most viewers turning up to see this will be after only one thing - to see how Hsu and her former co-host Kevin Tsai fare in their new roles, this time as the film's lead actress and director respectively.
Both turn out to be competent, mostly because they know how to milk what works for their fans.
Hsu, who is known for being wacky and bold, goes all out here, putting herself through one crazy antic after another without any concern for her image.
In one scene, she is wriggling on the floor dressed as a germ and, in another, she gets her face pulled in all directions while sploshing about in a mud pool.
Not that any of it requires much acting on her part, since she is just playing an exaggerated version of her usual persona.
Meanwhile, Tsai, the more pensive and sensible of the pair, uses the chance in his directorial debut to throw in all of his philosophical musings via a voice-over narration.
At one point, he says that even though some of people's best memories feel like a dream, they should not feel sad when it is all over because at least they still dreamt it.
Sounds like he is speaking directly to fans of the show.
