Mr. Go is an action drama comedy that delivers more than you had ever expected it would. It's such a high concept premise that most likely will assume that it follows a certain formula done before by Hollywood. Fortunately, it's not. There are some unexpected yet interesting surprises throughout the film.Remember the kid in Stephen Chow's CJ7? She's the circus ringmaster Wei Wei in this film.
Some of the plot elements presented in the film are questionable: Why would a parent dares to let his own baby go near a 300kg gorilla? Why would the Korean professional baseball league allows a gorilla to join in any team to compete? If the circus is in the middle of a desert, why would anyone willing to go watch the show? The CGI rendering of the gorillas Ling Ling and Lei Ting seems almost believable but feels uncanny at the same time.There are plenty of amusing emotional bonding moments between Ling Ling and the Korean baseball agent, Sung or Wei Wei. The scene where Ling Ling desperately trying to rescue Wei Wei during the Sichuan earthquake is particularly heartwarming. The baseball matches shown in the film are well choreographed.
Unfortunately, the film suffers from too many deliberate expositions about the character background and doesn't flow nicely as the story progresses. The helicopter chasing scene in the stadium seems a bit too much and unnecessary. There's no sense of team camaraderie shown in all the baseball matches and no players reactions to the new recruits in the team. The film also might lose some of its appeal to certain audiences due to its choice of sports.
Overall, it's still a decent major collaboration between China and South Korea to make such a high budget film.A decent watchable family film suitable for audience of all ages.
Plot summary
Wei-wei, a 15-year old circus ringmaster of a falling troupe in China, is left behind an insurmountable debt when her grandfather dies in the Great Sichuan Earthquake. The only family/friend she can depend on is a forty-five year old "baseball playing gorilla" named Ling-ling. When a loan shark threatens to sell Ling-ling and the circus kids to cover the debt, Wei-wei has no choice but to allow Ling-ling to be scouted by the materialistic sports agent Sung Chung-su to play in the Korean Baseball League. Despite the skeptical of the professional baseball society, Sung Chung-su successfully signs Ling-ling with a professional team with his calculated plan and sweet talks. Ling-ling, now dubbed "Mr. Go," hits consecutive home runs and brings victories to his team Doosan. His popularity grows so immensely that even the fans of his opposing teams cheer for him. Mr.Go's successful home-run parade continues, but Wei-wei and Sung, stunned and blinded by the sudden success, neglect to detect Ling-ling's worsening knee injury. When two rival Japanese baseball clubs compete to sign a scouting deal with "Mr.Go" by suggesting ground-breaking trade conditions to his agent Sung, "Mr.Go" suddenly falls to the ground and is unable to swing a bat...
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A decent watchable family film
A tale of Wei Wei and Ling Ling.
Hong Kong, Chinese, Taiwanese and now Jiao Xu, the 'CJ7' fame kid forayed into the Korean film industry. She was quite impressive in all her movies, we can call her a Disney girl from east. Her performance and flawless CGI character(s) are the movie's advantage. Frankly, I never expected such a clean graphical character like western's big production house do.
Last time I heard was these eastern countries fought for the rights of Senkaku islands. But now it is good to see they are together for this wonderful movie. It won't be your favourite flick, but will be a cool movie to watch with children. For the moment I even thought did they hired Andy Serkis to do motion capture for the Gorilla. Because it was that perfect and Serkis is the only known who is a master in giving such performance.
After losing their elders in an earthquake, a young circus ringmaster, Wei Wei and other children struggle to rebuild the business. When load shark threatens to take the kids and sell animals to cover the debt, Wei Wei comes up with a plan. To make a big buck that she must leave China for South Korea with her beloved pet, a gorilla called Ling Ling to take participate in the baseball series. Soon their popularity reaches far east, where many Japanese baseball franchises stand in the queue to sign Ling Ling in their team. When everything was going fine, the problem arises after money lender follows her there with another plan.
It is a Korean's answer to Hollywood in the field of live shot movie with merge of an animated character. We must appreciate the filmmakers for their contribution to this movie from impossible theme to making possible. The plot is not believable, a gorilla to play baseball? Humans are no match with a gorilla's strength, then how can they allow to participate the tournament. It was a comedy flick so there you go that mean it is nothing more than an entertainment. In the perspective of family audience and kids, it is worth giving a shot.
7.5/10
Nice concept, not-so-good realization
On the first time you step into theater studio to watch this movie, you may expect Mr. Go is just another family-oriented film with basic plot and predictable ending but I should say, it wasn't. The plot is well- build. For first thirty minutes of the movie we are asked to 'learn' the history of the star gorilla explaining the relation the gorilla and the human child shared. Not like another movie with animal-human relation, this one is so vivid. You'll know exactly why the gorilla loves her so much.Though some of plot elements are quite questionable. The plot twist also not disappointing, it plays with our sympathy to that gorilla and might cause to tears a bit (for kids, may be they really would cry, gentle one). Surprisingly, the visual are so Hollywood-like. The CG of gorilla looks so natural and expressive, scenes in stadium shows that they really look for details, such as choreography. Being released in 3D, it's worthy. You may shove your body to avoid the balls they are throwing but that's it. The only scene which is worthy to watch in 3D is just in the stadium one. The characters don't flow so smoothly through the entire movie. They give us some ala Korea jokes to laughed at, which are nice I think, but it can't cover the hole of its characterization. The difference between a character on the beginning and last half of the movie is so contrast without a sleek progression. We may questioning, "why is he suddenly like that?" Though like I said, the plot twist is still unpredictable. Some casts are brilliant, but I can't help myself to dislike the human- kid due to her angry-like expression in whole of the movie. Odagiri Jo's act is so amusing to be missed. Overall, it's a nice movie to be watched with your kids. The very 30 minutes may make you boring but the last 30 minutes is incredibly enjoyable for a trilingual movie (chinese, Korea, Japanese). It also gives good value through the story and heartwarming ending that will make you stay until the credits really comes out ;)