Sell Out! opens with an art show reporter Rafflesia Pong (played by Jerrica Lai) interviewing Yeo Jun Han (director of the film!), whose short film just won some random award from some obscure European film festival. While Rafflesia questions why "boring", "arty" asian films like Yeo's could win international acclaims and wonders if it's the westerners' tendency to view unfamiliarity as a sign of quality, Yeo (wearing nothing but shorts) rants back about the lack of realism in films like actions and musicals and that he makes films only to reflect the reality. This is immediately followed by a shootout scene and Yeo himself bursting into songs. With this opening this Malaysian film signals its no holds barred intention at satire early. Too bad that while the film's bold, saturated attempt at satire is worth praising, it is too in love with its own jokes and agenda that it forgets how to tell them well. As a result, many of the jokes that work well on paper end up flat and unfunny onscreen, making this film a missed opportunity.
The plot, or something that resembles it, tells the story of 2 employees of a big corporation called FONY Conglomerate. One is Rafflesia who's in danger of losing her show and job because she is losing ratings to a competing reality show hosted by the latest Eurasian "it" girl. The other is Eric Tan (Peter Davis) an idealistic engineer who pitches an efficient, reliable soy bean machine product to the FONY corporation executives, but they refuse to release it unless Eric dumb it down (or build a failure mechanism that activates after warranty expire). When Rafflesia's interview of her dying boyfriend raised ratings and inspired her to start a reality show about interviewing dying people and Eric literally develops a second personality who encourages him to commercialize his invention, both start to "sell out" as the movie starts to break into musical segments and karaoke interludes too.
One thing that Sell Out! cannot be accused of is lacking ambition and targets. Sell Out! ridicules everything from the titular tendency of people to sell out (whether they like it or not), to the profit driven practices of corporation, overworship of exotic asian movies by western film festivals, the popularity of Eurasian personalities in Southeast Asia and last but not least, the government. However, Yeo is more interested in using the jokes to get his points across rather than letting them work on the story. As a result, the movie bombards many jokes left and right but most of them fall flat because they don't have enough buildup and context besides the director's points. It also doesn't help that most of the characters are caricature including the leads . Worst of all, while Yeo may be a great satirist, he is a terrible songwriter (his lyrics are mostly the rhyming "break my heart, tear us apart" boyband songs variety) that the movie suffers when it switches gears to its musical segments.
One of the best thing about this movie is actress Jerrica Lai who brings a spirited portrayal to what amounts as a chess pawn character for the director. She also has a wonderful voice, the best among all the singing cast, to overcome Yeo's terrible songwriting; it's too bad that her first song arrives at the latter half of the film. Peter Davis, on the other hand, is really lifeless that makes one wonder if he's truly bad or he's part of the joke that satirize Eurasian celebrities.
It's encouraging to see more full satirical films like this coming out of Asia, especially Malaysia. However while the effort is certainly admirable, it's certainly preferable to see a film that actually succeeds at delivering both the laughs and a good story. Let's hope that we'll see films like that in the future, but Sell Out! is definitely not it. But perhaps the best compliment that can be given to Sell Out! is despite everything, it never actually sells out at all.
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Sell Out!
Written and Directed by: Yeo Jun-Han
Starring: Jerrica Lai and Peter Davis
Trailer:
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