Picture this, Hong Kong circa the mid-eighties. Movie moguls the Shaw Brothers discover their period martial arts films are no longer a box-office draw, but science fiction is all the rage. Japan, Italy and even Turkey have produced their own Star Wars rip-offs, while rival studios Golden Harvest are prepping boy wonder Tsui Hark’s, Star Wars-inspired, pet project Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983). Shaw Brothers grab themselves a whiz kid of their own: award-winning filmmaker Chan Kuo-ming, who made a big splash on television with his horror series Mystery Beyond. They give him a budget of HK $10 million, a stellar leading lady in Cherie Chung (one of the decade’s biggest stars), and an unprecedented, two-year shooting schedule just to get the special effects right. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is billed as a “science fiction, Chinese style… a bright, crazy, truly out of this world epic.” Though featuring numerous nods to Star Wars, the plot draws from that other sci-fi blockbuster of 1977: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. How do you top Steven Spielberg’s epic ode to UFOs and a vital sense of wonder? Turn it into a sex comedy of course!
Nuttier than your granny’s fruit cake, this Benny Hill-style farce revolves around Ah Chen (Cherie Chung), a sexy, accident prone shopgirl, introduced recreating Marilyn Monroe’s iconic, skirt billowing up scene from The Seven Year Itch. Ah Chen’s relentless run of bad luck changes after an abduction by aliens transforms her into a major celebrity. She is courted by a nerdy millionaire (David Lo), releases a hit single, stars in a Shaw Bros. period martial arts film (how’s that for irony?), and validates a crackpot scientist’s theories about UFOs. Meanwhile, a private eye (Yi Lei) in love with Ah Chen, sets out to prove the alien abduction was faked.
Little Star’s special effects scenes are brief, but eye-catching: a giant spaceship made of stars reaches down to grab Ah Chen, shuttle bays cribbed from Battlestar Galactica, a Millennium Falcon look-alike swoops across the night sky, and vast, exterior sets, beautifully lit in swathes of orange, blue and gold. Still it’s a sex comedy and a pretty risible one at that, including bad taste gags about suicide, impotence, rape and Yi Lei’s unfortunate sidekick (Tam Tin Nam) who looks like a Chinese Rondo Hatton. Chung sings the bouncy theme tune, there’s a Jekyll and Hyde plot-twist and Kuo-ming cleverly satirizes Eighties’ money-grabbing values and the shallow pursuit of fame. But his cast of petty, venal, tantrum prone characters are entirely dislikeable and the speeded up slapstick wears thin.
Cherie Chung fans are best advised to seek out the many films she made opposite Chow Yun-fat, including award winning rom-com An Autumn’s Tale (1987) and John Woo’s Once a Thief (1991). She also graced Tsui Hark’s outstanding Peking Opera Blues (1986). Speaking of whom, check out the guy wearing dark sunglasses in Little Star’s boardroom scene. Yup, that’s him. Feeling a little smug perhaps, because critics ranked Zu among the hundred greatest Chinese films of all time, while Little Star bombed big time. In spite of everything, cult film masochists (like yours truly) will want to experience this one of a kind exercise in sci-fi inanity.
Eventually, our hapless private eye disguises himself as a hooker to lure the alien kidnappers and boards the mother ship for a lightsaber duel with a Darth Vader clone. The sight of hairy comedian Yi Lei in a tight, leather miniskirt, twirling lightsaber-nunchakus isn’t something you’re likely to forget…unfortunately.
