Culture Representation: Taking place in Nanjing, China, the dramatic film “Always Have Always Will” features an all-Asian group of people representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A suicidal man gets a new lease on life when a 9-year-old girl with brain cancer befriends him.
Culture Audience: “Always Have Always Will” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and bittersweet stories about friendships between people with medical issues.
Peng Yuchang and Yang Enyou in “Always Have Always Will” (Photo courtesy of Niu Vision Media)
“Always Have Always Will” is a lovely film about an unlikely friendship between a suicidal man and a precocious 9-year-old girl who has brain cancer. This drama has excellent depictions of joy and heartbreak, with a standout performance from Yang Enyou.
Directed by Liu Jie, “Always Have Always Will” (not to be confused with the Chinese 2021 TV series of the same name) was written by Yang Fuzhi, Zhang Jiajia and Guo Tao. The movie takes place primarily in Nanjing, China. It’s where Song Yili (played by Peng Yuchang) lives and where he has decided he wants to die. The beginning of the movie shows that Yili has become so depressed, he wants to commit suicide.
Yili, who is in his late 20s or early 30s, is a divorced bachelor who has no friends and is unemployed. He has talented cooking skills, but the restaurant that he inherited from his deceased mother has been out of business for the past six months. Within the first five minutes of the movie, Yili is shown sitting in his parked car on a street as he is about to take an overdose of pills.
But as fate would have it, another car accidentally rams into Yili’s car. Yili wakes up in a hospital room, where has find out that was he only got some minor injuries as a result of this accident. Yili is also told that the driver of the other car takes full responsibility for the collision.
Yili isn’t exactly thrilled that his suicide attempt failed. He shows all the indications of being clinically depressed. Yili also secretly plans to try to kill himself again. Hs ex-wife Tian Meihua (played by Zou Yuanqing) briefly visits him at the hospital because she is the person who’s listed as his emergency contact. Before she leaves, she tells Yili that he should probably change his emergency contact information.
Someone comes into Yili’s life and will change his perspective. Yu Xiaoju (played by Yang Enyou) is a 9-year-old girl with brain cancer. She is staying at the same hospital and first meets Yili when she mischievously runs away from her unnamed mother (played by Lyu Xingchen) and hides in Yili’s hospital room. Xiaoju is friendly and has a zest for life.
Yili doesn’t want this kid to hang around him, but Xiaoju persists and ends up hiding in Yili’s van after he is discharged from the hospital. Xiaoju begs him to help him find her father, whom she has not seen in years. And so, Yili and Xiaoju end up going on a life-changing road trip. Xiaoju tricks Yili into thinking that her mother has approved of this trip.
On this road trip, Yili and Xiaoju have meaningful encounters with Yili’s former college roommate and a lovelorn businesswoman. Yili and Xiaoju meet up with Yili’s former college roommate Fang Kuaiqi (played by Wei Daxun), whose nickname is Diamond Seven, because Yili wants to borrow money from him. The businesswoman, whose name is Xu Jingjing (played by Li Xueqin) randomly meets Yili and Xiaoju when she needs a ride to an important business meeting.
Diamond Seven owns a small gift shop and hasn’t seen or spoken to Yili in a year because Yili cut off contact with him. Through conversations, it’s revealed that Yili, Diamond Seven and Yili’s ex-wife used to be roommates when they were college students. Yili’s divorce, the death of Yili’s mother and the failure of Yili’s restaurant business put Yili on a downward spiral of depression.
The reunion with Diamond Seven (who says Yili gave him that nickname) reveals that Yili wasn’t always pessimistic and grumpy. Diamond Seven and Yili have known each other since childhood. Diamond Seven says that Yili was the only student in their childhood who didn’t bully or taunt Diamond Seven for being disabled. Seeing his longtime friend again reminds Yili of the person he used to be when he was happy.
Xu Jingjing appears to be a confident and independent woman, but she’s distracted by problems in her love life. When she finds out something that is emotionally devastating to her, Yili sees how she copes with it. It inspires him to think about coping with his own problems in a different way from the self-pitying and self-destructive path that he had been taking.
Xiaoju ends up being Yili’s biggest inspiration, despite some rough patches in their friendship. All of the performances in “Always Have Always Will” are heartfelt and believable. But this movie would not work as well without the impressive talent of Yang, who gives one of the best child actor performances of the year. “Always Have Always Will” overflows with emotions and has a story that will stay with viewers long after the movie is over.
Niu Vision Media released “Always Have Always Will” in select U.S. cinemas and in China on March 21, 2025. The movie was released in China on March 8, 2025.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional city of Aoo Kang, China, the comedy film “Honey Money Phony” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with some black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: An employee from an insurance company teams up with con artists to get back the money that her ex-boyfriend stole from her.
Culture Audience: “Honey Money Phony” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and comedies that are intentionally silly but might annoy some viewers expecting a more entertaining movie.
Pictured clockwise from left: Sunny Sun, Li Xueqin, David Wang and Gia Jin in “Honey Money Phony” (Photo courtesy of CMC Pictures)
“Honey Money Phony” is a lightweight comedy that falls short of its potential. The story (about people trying to retrieve stolen money from a con artist) gets convoluted and dull very quickly. The performances are adequate while the plot spirals into folly. The movie is intentionally absurdist, but the movie has an uneven tone of being overly sappy while attempting to be edgy. It’s a combination that just doesn’t work for this film.
Directed by Da Peng and written by Su Biao, “Honey Money Phony” (which takes place in the fictional city of Aoo Kang, China) has a simple concept that becomes stretched out and muddled by a series of sloppily staged shenanigans. The main characters are introduced in a somewhat jumbled way. Other characters with smaller roles come in and out of the story and end up being quite useless to the plot. “Honey Money Phony” isn’t exactly fun to watch, unless you think it’s fun to watch characters repeatedly make fools out of themselves in their bungled attempts to do whatever they’re doing in incoherent scenes.
The protagonist of “Honey Money Phony” is Lin Quinlang (played by Gia Jin), a 29-year-old woman who works as an insurance company employee. Quinlang is in debt for about ¥200,000 (which is a little more than $27,000 in U.S. dollars in the mid-2020s) because an ex-boyfriend named Zhang Zi Jun (played by Wang Hao) scammed her out of this money. A flashback shows that Jun lied to her and told her that he lost all of his college tuition money. Quinlang took out a ¥200,000 loan and gave the money to Jun, who then promptly broke up with her and disappeared from her life.
An early montage in the film shows that in addition to her main job at the insurance company, Quinlang has “side hustle” gigs as a waitress, flyer distributor, dog walker and being a social media personality called the Frugal Fairy, who gives advice on how to save money. In voiceover narration, Quinlang says that she doesn’t make enough money from her Frugal Fairy videos to cover the fees charged for her to be a member of the social media platform where she posts the videos.
Quinlang’s closest friend is Dong Xiaohui (played by Li Xueqin), a former co-worker at the insurance company. The movie has a rushed explanation that in the recent past, Xiaohui got caught embezzling money from the insurance company and was fired. Xiaohui now has to pay back the money that she owes from the embezzlement.
And the way that Xiaohui is getting money is by continuing to commit fraud. Her scam is pretending to be a blind woman, walking out on a street in front of car, and falling down, in order to fool the driver into thinking that the car hit her. Xiaohui even carries fake blood with her to quickly put on herself before the driver gets out of the car to see if she is hurt. As part of the scam, Xiaohui persuades the driver (who is usually shocked and nervous) to give her money to get “medical treatment” and so she won’t report this “accident.”
“Honey Money Phony” has a very off-putting way in how it makes Xiaohui’s scamming look acceptable, like it’s all one big joke. There’s no good reason for why the movie has this attitude that Xiaohui can be excused for her scamming, but anyone who scams Quinlang is “wrong” and should be punished. It’s all very hypocritical and stupid.
One day, Quinlang becomes the victim of another scam in a poorly staged scenario that looks very unrealistic in the movie. Quinlang gets a phone call from a man claiming to work for the company where she posts her social media videos. The caller tells Quinlang that her social media account is suspended because she put her personal banking information online so viewers could make direct deposits to her account.
When Quinlang says that this is a common practice for social media influencers, the caller says it’s still against the company policy. The caller than says that Quinlang can fix the problem by paying a fine and her social media account will be reactivated. The man gives her an account number where she can transfer the money to pay the fine. Quinlang doesn’t actually check to see if her account is suspended. She just takes this stranger’s word for it. How idiotic is that?
Quinlang transfers the money and immediately regrets it. She rushes over to a bank, where a friend works, and asks the friend to look up the name of the person who owns the account while Quinlang still has the caller on the phone. The friend tells her the account is owned by someone named Ouyang Hui (played by Sunny Sun), who is surprised that Quinlang found out his identity so quickly. An angry Quinlang threatens to expose him.
But in this ridiculous movie, Quinlang ends up telling Hui about how she was scammed out of ¥200,000 by her ex-boyfriend Jun. Hui makes a deal with Quinlang that he will return her money for the “suspension fine” fraud, and he will help her get her money back from Jun if she doesn’t report Hui to the authorities. It should come as no surprise that Quinlang and Hui become romantically attracted to each other, although the cast members playing these characters don’t have believable romantic chemistry with each other.
Two other people eventually join this plot to get the money back from Jun: Quinlang’s friend Xiaohui; Hui’s uncle Bai Shitong (played by David Wang), who is Hui’s con-artist “mentor”; and Hai Ou (played by Ada Liu), another victim conned by Jun. Because Jun is a ladies’ man who seduces women out of their money, you can easily guess what kind of setup will happen, since Jun has never met Xiaohui before. Someone named Frank (played by Song Muzi) is also part of the story.
“Honey Money Phony” gets distracted with some nonsensical sublots that are supposed to be hilarious but quickly grow tiresome. There’s a running joke that Quinlang and Hui keep encountering a weird photographer (played by Yi Yunhe), who has salivary glands that are so over-active, he drenches people in saliva whenever he talks to them. By the end of a conversation with him, people literally look like they’ve been dunked in a swimming pool.
This over-exaggerated sight gag would be funnier if “Honey Money Phony” went full-tilt into slapstick comedy. But the movie keeps going back into sob story territory when it tells more information about Quinlang and Hui. Quinlang says she moved to Aoo Kang to start fresh after being fired from her previous job for reporting the boss who sexually harassed her. A flashback shows that when she met Jun at a tennis court, he offered to help her with legal problems that she had because she broke a non-compete clause in the contract she had with a previous job.
Hui also has a backstory that is supposed to make him look more sympathetic. It has to do with Hui being an illegitimate child whose father (played by Xiao Ai, in a brief flashback) abandoned Hui when Hui was a child. Shitong is supposed to be Hui’s uncle, but the movie has a repetitive off-kilter joke that Quinlang somehow thinks that Hui and Shitong are lovers. “Honey Money Phony” is mostly goofy, but throwing in incest jokes just seems jarringly out-of-place. It’s an example of how the movie can’t decide if it wants to be edgy or tender.
The cast members seem to be doing the best that they can with a screenplay and direction that aren’t very good. It might be hard for some viewers to relate to Quinlang because she’s so gullible when it comes to being scammed out of her money—even though insurance company workers are trained on how to spot scams, and Quinlang gives financial advice as a social media “influencer.” One of the better performances in the cast comes from Li, who has skilled comedic timing in her role as Xiaohui, although this character is fairly unlikable in how she’s a con artist too.
“Honey Money Phony” overstays its welcome with two separate epilogues. In one of these epilogues, Richie Ren has a cameo as himself in a concert scene that looks very hokey. By the time the second epilogue rolls around, most viewers will just want the film to end once and for all. And unfortunately, “Honey Money Phony” is the type of disappointing movie that is easily forgotten not long after seeing it.
CMC Pictures released “Honey Money Phony” in select U.S. cinemas on January 3, 2025. The movie was released in China on December 31, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Guangzhou, China, the comedy/drama film “YOLO” (based on the 2014 Japanese film “100 Yen Love”) features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A reclusive woman in her 30s gets close to a boxer who works at a gym, and she decides to train with him to become a boxer.
Culture Audience: “YOLO” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of Jia Ling, boxing movies, and stories about underestimated people who change their own lives for the better.
Lei Jiayin and Jia Ling in “YOLO” (Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures International)
“YOLO” is undoubtedly inspired by the first “Rocky” movie, but this is no “Rocky” ripoff. The movie has some unexpected moments amid some predictability, along with heartfelt drama and a notable transformative performance from writer/director/star Jia Ling. The first third of the movie might be frustrating to watch because the protagonist is portrayed as pathetic, in a way that might appear to be almost insulting to this character. However, as “YOLO” progresses and the protagonist evolves, there are some twists and turns to the story that will take viewers on journey that becomes an emotional inspiration by the end of the movie.
“YOLO” (which is an acronym for “you only live once”) is based on the 2014 Japanese film “100 Yen Love.” “YOLO” (which takes place and was filmed in Guangzhou, China) starts off as mostly a comedy, but then it makes a credible transition to a more dramatic film as changes occur in the protagonist’s life. If the movie has any “feel good” moments, they are earned, because there’s a lot heartache and personal challenges along the way.
The opening scene of “YOLO” takes place right before a boxing match starts between two women at the Xiangjiang Boxing Club. The reigning champ is Liu Hongxia, while her challenger is revealed later when “YOLO” circles back to this scene in the last third of the film. The coach for the challenger can be heard off-camera saying about the boxing match: “Your rival is a pro. If it’s too hard, I’ll stop it.”
The next scene takes place in a convenience store, where store owner Mrs. Du (played by Zhao Haiyan) and her daughter Du Ledan (played by Zhang Xiaofei), who’s in her late 20s, work in the store. Mrs. Du (whose first name is not mentioned in the movie) and Ledan are showing a live surveillance video to Ledan’s distant cousin Doudou (played by Yang Zi), who is an aspiring TV producer/host. The surveillance video is showing Mrs. Du’s older daughter Du Leying (played by Jia), who is 32, as she is sleeping on a couch in the apartment that is located in the same building, behind the convenience store.
Mrs. Du explains with dismay and concern to Doudou that unemployed Leying typically lounges around and does a lot of sleeping during the day. Mrs. Du, her daughters, and Ledan’s daughter all live in the apartment. Ledan is a divorced mother of a daughter named Zhuzi, who’s about 3 or 4 years old. Mrs. Du and her husband Mr. Du (played by Zhang Qi) are separated, and he rarely communicates with his estranged wife and their children.
It’s later revealed that Leying has been chronically unemployed and living an aimless life for about 10 years, ever since Leying graduated from college and had problems keeping a job. Any casual observer can see that Leying is depressed. Leying says she can’t keep a job because she’s not good at communicating with people. Leying doesn’t say it out loud, but she is also self-conscious about her body size.
Meanwhile, Leying’s mother and sister are beginning to get fed up with Leying being unproductive. Doudou works as an intern for a reality TV show about giving chronically unemployed people a chance to turn their lives around. Doudou has been invited by Ledan to interview a reluctant Leying for an audition video for the show. Doudou sees this interview not only as a way to help Leying but also as a way to impress Doudou’s bosses at the TV show and hopefully be offered a permanent job on the show. Leying doesn’t do well during this interview, which frustrates her mother and sister even more.
Leying feels like a misfit and an outsider in her own home. Can her life get any worse? Yes. Leying has a boyfriend named Wei Dong Feng (played by Wei Xiang), who works as a delivery bike rider. Dong Feng has been secretly having an affair with Leying’s best friend Li Li (played by Li Xueqin), who is now pregnant. Li and Dong Feng also plan to get married in the near future.
Li and Leying have been friends since their childhood, when they were both bullied at school. Leying is invited to have lunch with Dong Feng and Li at a restaurant. Dong Feng breaks up with Leying during this lunch. Leying guesses correctly that another woman is the reason for the breakup. She grabs Dong Feng’s phone to find out who it is. And that’s how Leying discovers the truth that Li is “the other woman.” A devastated Leying also finds out about Li being pregnant and about the marriage plans.
On the night of this breakup, a very sad Leying walks around the city. One of the places she passes is a boxing gym. Through the gym window, she sees a man in his late 30s or early 40s who is practicing on a punching bag. Leying doesn’t know it yet, but his name is Hao Kun (played by Lei Jiayin), and he is a former professional boxer who gives boxing lessons at the gym. Leying and Ku will soon meet each other under some embarrassing circumstances.
Leying is unemployed but she isn’t completely broke. She has inherited an apartment from her grandmother that is worth an unnamed amount of money. There’s some jealousy that Leying’s mother and sister have about this inheritance, because Leying is the only one in the family who received this apartment as an inheritance. There’s also a hint of other family turmoil, because it’s mentioned at Mrs. Du is suing her sister for reasons that aren’t detailed in the movie.
Ledan asks Leying to transfer the apartment deed to Ledan, so that Ledan can sell the apartment and use some of the money to send Zhuzi to an elite private school. Leying says no to the request, and the two sisters get into an argument. Ledan’s pent-up resentment comes out at that moment, as she physically attacks Leying by punching Leying and tackling her to the ground. Leying doesn’t put up much of a fight, but this assault is the last straw for her.
Leying moves out of the apartment and finds another place to live. She needs to find a job to pay her rent. She becomes a server at a casual barbecue restaurant owned and managed by an unnamed man (played by Xu Jun Cong), who is very rude and condescending to Leying. It’s because of this restaurant job that Leying meets Kun.
One night, Leying is working at the restaurant, when a drunk customer gives Leying his car keys and asks her to get a pack of cigarettes from the glove compartment of his car, which he describes. The car is parked on a street right outside the restaurant. Leying gets in the car at around the same time that Kun is urinating on an outside wall of the gym, which is next door to the restaurant.
Leying sees Kun urinating and gets flustered. She accidentally turns on the car headlights, which shine directly on Kun. When she tries to turn the headlights off, she accidentally turns on the windshield wipers and the car blinkers. Even though no one else can can see what Kun is doing, he thinks Leying is trying to humiliate him for urinating outside in public.
Kun angrily goes over to the car to confront Leying, and she explains what she’s doing in the car. Kun advises her to ask the car owner what to do. He also tells Leying that he works at the gym and wouldn’t normally urinate in public, but the gym is closed, and he didn’t know where else to urinate.
After this tense conversation, Leying notices that Kun accidentally left his boxing gloves at the front of the building. She takes the gloves for safekeeping, and the next day, Leying goes to the gym to return the gloves to Kun. A female worker at the gym tries to persuade Leying to take boxing lessons at the gym, but Leying declines the offer.
Meanwhile, Kun is under pressure at his job to bring in more gym memberships. His boss tells Kun that Kun is underperforming in gym membership sales, and Kun could be at risk of getting fired. Kun just wants to do boxing at the gym and not be a salesperson. When Leying accidentally tags Kun on social media, he asks her out on a date, with the ulterior motive to try to sell her a gym membership. And so begins the unlikely relationship between Kun and Leying.
Although the trailer for “YOLO” shows Kun training to become a boxer, most of that doesn’t happen until the last third of the movie. The middle of the movie is about Kun training to make a comeback as a boxer. Things get a little complicated when Kun and Leying become sexually intimate, and there’s some uncertainty about how much of a romance they want to have in their relationship.
“YOLO” isn’t a typical boxing movie because it has many issues that are not in most boxing films. Leying is often body shamed because of her weight, which usually has harsher consequences for women than it does for men. For most boxing films, the boxers are not fat when they begin training.
There’s also a turning point for Leying’s self-esteem after she reacts in a certain way to sexual harassment from her boss. And then there’s the matter of Leying being sexually involved with her coach, which is something that is definitely not in most boxing movies. “YOLO” treats the consensual relationship between Leying and Kun with no judgment.
The relationship between Leying and Kun is not “only in a movie” cute. It’s messy, with both tension and warmth. Kun and Leying have arguments, but they are also supportive of each other. He can be very tough on her inside and outside the gym. And all that training results in Leying transforming physically as well as emotionally.
“YOLO” doesn’t shy away from any comparisons to “Rocky,” because there’s a training sequence that is a blatant homage to “Rocky,” including using Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now” theme song from the movie. Are some moments in the move sentimentally earnest? Yes, but not in a way that’s overly cloying.
The heart and soul of “YOLO” is in Jia’s emotionally versatile and physically demanding performance—she gained and lost 50 kilograms (or 110 pounds) of body weight for this role—which is a testament to how it’s never to late for anyone to make improvements in life. Leying goes from someone who hides from life because she’s afraid of getting hurt to someone who finds the courage to live life to the fullest, no matter what the risks. “YOLO” might start out looking like a lightweight boxing comedy, but it ends up packing a powerful punch in the dramatic moments that show how having healthy self-confidence and inner peace are more valuable than external rewards.
Sony Pictures International released “YOLO” in select U.S. cinemas on March 8, 2024. The movie was released in China on February 10, 2024.
