Well I'm back for this blog after some this blog has been inactive. I guess it's time for me to review the Chinese/Japanese film called Tea Fight. As a tea drinker, I found the movie interesting and maybe some people really don't like it but I find it kind of cute in its way. So we begin with Erika Toda who is the main character Mikiko who has her admirer in Murano. So the other character is Vic Chou who I thought was the leading guy but he is sort of the antagonist (not really in this script) together with Taiwanese talent Janine Chang as Ruhua (whose acting really stands out compared to the rest) and some short minor role by senior actor Eric Tsang. The film is written by Akane Yamada and Wang Yemin making it a Chinese/Japanese film.
Storywise, it is pretty weird but watchable. I thought of WTF about the battle of tea? Why fight over tea? We have the so-called curse of male black tea and female black tea and well, I'm a black tea fan myself and all this "mysticism" is kinda interesting at first. What I thought was Mikiko's father gave up on tea and unfortunately blamed tea on the reason why Mikoko's mother died. It's the curse of black tea or so they say. Now I thought of Magic Kitchen's so-called curse and quite predictably, there was really no curse, nothing more than a feud of hatred and crossing morals.
Vic Chou's acting as Brother Yang has certainly improved and he's probably the show stealer for most of it. He's one badass black market tea trader who had abandoned his morals. Yang's ex-girlfriend Ruhua was his ex-girlfriend and they broke up because of the alleged curse which they don't know doesn't exist. The protagonist wants to break the curse and goes to Taiwan, where Yang thinks that she holds the black tea when in reality, it's with his ex-girlfriend Ruhua which leads to some comedic scenes and some moral scenes.
Eventually the tea fight's real fight was not against others but against self. Like Chinese philosophy once said, "He who conquers himself has conquered all." it was sort of like a throwback to classics like Confucius, Mencius and Lao Tzu for starters or even the strategy master Sun Tzu. This leads to Yang's realization of the lines he's crossed, his reconcilation with Ruhua and of course, Mikoko's father brought back to his true self. While it's leaving a hanging ending, it did entertain me quite a bit.
My rating? 7/10. Pretty enjoyable but not really all that great. Maybe it's strictly for fans of Erika Toda, Janine Chang and Vic Chou like me. But you decide. For me, it's entertaining but not all that great.
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