The Discovery Channel is showing this movie
as part of a week-long series
focusing on the
Hi! Welcome to The Silver Spleen.
My name is Lei Feng and this is my review of
PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ.
Bi Zhifei had a dream:
he wanted to make a movie.
He wanted people to like his movie.
He hoped it would be a success
But like my mother always said,
"wish in one hand and sh*t in the other,
and see which one fills up first."
Or, if you're constipated, just put a DVD of
PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ
into one of your hands. It's the same thing.
But before I get into it, let me say right up front
that I want to hold
most of the cast absolutely blameless.
They're apparently students from
China's leading drama schools
and probably have hopes and wishes of their own,
so I don't want anyone to think that I'm
dumping on them.
Yeah, some of them probably should think about
changing their career goals,
and someone really needs to speak to
this young woman about the perils of cosmetic surgery,
but so what?
They're young and impressionable.
Bi Zhifei, on the other hand, isn't,
and he should have known better.
He should have known better than to cast himself.
He should have known better than to direct this movie,
or write it, or any of the other ten jobs
(no, really) he gave himself.
What the f@#$ is an editing instructor?
And how is it so painfully obvious
that nobody ever instructed him on how to edit a movie?
PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ
makes ANIMAL RESCUE SQUAD look like an art film.
And comparatively, it will be.
I'm actually really looking forward to watching
ANIMAL RESCUE SQUAD, and I think you are too.
Bi Zhifei is purportedly a PhD holder,
(though there are apparently some
irregularities with his work)
and claims to have used more than a decade
using his 'heart and sweat' [sic]
writing, filming, and doing post-production
on PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ.
Bi Zhifei claims that the budget was 50 million RMB,
but other figures put it at half of that
and to be honest, it really doesn't matter.
It made 2.3 million RMB at the box office.
And that's the combined total from two releases.
The first time PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ
played in cinemas, it only lasted five days.
But Bi Zhifei was never in it for the money:
He must have felt vindicated, therefore,
when the film won an award at
the San Francisco Global International
[sic] Film Festival.
Or not, because as it turns out,
that entire festival was bought, paid for, and staged
just to try to make
PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ look good.
Besides who cares about those other film festivals,
like Vennies [sic].
And look, 25 people actually went to this Film Festival,
so you know it's legit!
Or not.
Speaking of legitimate,
I'm sure there's a very good narrative reason
that the school in this film
just happens to be in a tropical environment
with palm trees, and beautiful sand,
and lovely ocean water, I'm sure that's a coincidence.
I'm sure it had nothing to do with
getting paid to take a vacation in a tropical paradise.
Or, you know, that your father-in-law
is a wealthy real estate developer on Hainan Island
and you allegedly spent years hanging out there
trying to get cozy with vacationing celebrities.
I'm sure your very wealthy and well-connected
father-in-law had absolutely no part in getting
(previously) respected media people
to say nice things about your film.
A leading member of the China Film Association said
He must have glaucoma. And a head injury.
A professor at the
Chinese National Academy of the Arts said it was
There's no evidence whatsoever to show that these
resoundingly positive opinions
were in any way coerced.
Now I'm not saying these things (just) because
PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ is a bad movie.
I'm saying it because Bi Zhifei is a d*ck.
When you make a movie this bad
with your name all over the credits
(and I do mean all over),
you ought to take responsibility
for the success of the movie
or, if it so happens, the abject failure.
Not this idiot.
He blames everybody but himself.
Now, there's an old Chinese saying:
"feeling shame gives rise to courage"
But there's another saying that says
"if you know nothing, you fear nothing"
I'm not sure which one describes
Bi Zhifei most accurately.
Maybe both.
Well, at first he tried to blame Douban,
where PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ
got an historically low rating,
and was crowned the worst movie ever.
Then he tried to blame the people who owned Douban,
claiming that it was 'foreign owned'
and its founder was no longer a Chinese citizen.
When all else fails, blame the foreigners!
He urged the China Film Bureau
to crack down on Douban, calling them quote
Which I take kind of personally,
since that's a pretty accurate description of
what I would aspire to.
Bi Zhifei ended up suing Douban for 'unfair ratings'
and demanded one yuan in compensation.
This would, of course, double the value of
PURE HEARTS INTO CHINESE SHOWBIZ
but he probably needed the money
because he wasn't just suing Douban, oh no.
Remember I said he had a bunch of jobs on this...
'movie'?
Well, he wrote the theme song,
and he somehow got SNH48 to sing it.
And then they refused to do a promotional video
for the song, so he tried to sue them too.
"Sue everybody! Punitive damages!"
I don't really know.
The only thing I do know about SNH48
is that they have some kind of connection to GNZ48
who should all be charged with a
severe lack of patriotism
for what they've done to this song:
But like I said before,
I don't want to blame young, easily misled people
for participating in this mess.
That, after all, is kind of the message of... this movie.
These impressionable young students
learn a lot of tough life lessons (or not).
Their dedicated, handsome, (or not)
teacher guides them with wisdom (or not),
dedication, and a lot of goofy facial expressions.
It's almost as if he's doing
all the acting that the rest of the cast isn't (or not).
He stinks as an actor almost as much as a director,
but at least we don't have to watch him directing.
We just have to watch the movie that he directed,
and... f@#$ that!
I watched this movie so you don't have to.
Although, having said that, it's...
it's actually kind of worth seeing,
because no matter how bad I tell you it is,
there's no way to really understand without seeing it.
It has the most unusual and...
wrongest use of undercranking I've ever seen.
It also has the classic bad foreign (redundant!) actor
who somehow manages to do a British accent
with a German accent.
No, I can't... explain it.
Just like I can't explain what's meant by
I really didn't enjoy this movie,
but I have to be honest,
I kind of enjoyed watching it with some of my friends
because it's such a terrible film
that it's almost entertaining,
and I would suggest that if you do watch this film,
that's really how you should do it.
I mean let's face it,
this thing's never gonna see a cinema screen
ever again.
I'm not even sure it'll ever get released on DVD,
but it is on streaming services 'cause y'know,
there's a sucker born every minute,
and just watch it that way and laugh at it.
It's incredible how bad this movie is.
You know I always tell people don't steal movies, right?
Well, don't steal this movie because God forbid,
if somebody catches you,
imagine how embarrassing it'll be,
I mean leave aside the wrongness of stealing,
like "You stole _that_?" So just don't do it.
If you really enjoy these videos, and you wanted
maybe to show me how much you enjoyed them,
I hate to say that you should put a
monetary value on affection, but you could do that, so...
If you enjoyed this review, please let me know,
and if you didn't, let me know.
If you enjoy the channel, please subscribe.
Thank you for watching, and I'll see you again soon.