[In Flight] One Night in Supermarket (Ye Dian / 夜店)

Crazy Shift

There's a certain familiar ring to this slick comedy that made it enjoyable to sit through, from characters wonderfully portrayed to the premise of having the zaniest of events play out in one overnight mad caper, and it's even more surprising when it's helmed by first time writer-director Qing Yang who delivered this definite crowd pleaser almost like a veteran

Things seem almost routine at Wang Wang Supermarket, where geeky staff Li Junwei (Qiao Renlang) continues his voyeuristic activity spying on fellow staff, the pretty Tang Xiaolian (Li Xiaolu), recording her movements slyly from his camera phone. Unable to muster any courage to ask her out, the circumstances that will unfold over the next few hours will put him in direct contact with the girl of his dreams, although he has to figure out how to get them out of their predicament when He Sanshui (Xu Zheng) barges into the shop demanding that the shop owner gives him his lottery winnings because of a botched up ticketing.

There are plenty of reversal of roles here as to who's the captor and the captive, coupled with the a handful of hilarious incidents that happen in the supermarket when Sanshui, in executing Junwei's plan of running the supermarket as his own and recouping his losses through sales, encounters a myriad of clientele walking into the store. What more, having his henchman Lun Tai (Wang Dongfang) on the loose and very much hungry, adds on to the spot of laughter, especially when a taser gets thrown into the mix.

While the first half was fun, the second half dragged a little in having the premise become a lot more complicated as if searching hard for the perfect way to end it. The final act with the robber threatened to unravel all the good work done earlier on, throwing in the subplot of a diamond heist gone wrong a tad too late. Nonetheless it still had many positives going for it, with the coda after the credits being something predictable from the start.