ESCAPE FROM THE 21ST CENTURY (2024)
4 stars
Signature Entertainment. Digital Out Now. Blu Ray 24th March
ESCAPE FROM THE 21ST CENTURY (Cong 21 Shi Ji an Quan Che Li) is a madcap time travel adventure from China which kind of never lets up as it careens headlong into the crazy plot!
Cheng Yong Wang (Zhuozhao Li), Zha Wang (Yichen Chen) and Pao Pao (Qixuan Kang) are a trio of 18 year olds who are best buddies and hang around with each other, getting up to no good. There is also Cheng Yong Wang’s girlfriend, Yi Yang (Fanding Ma). It is 1999 on a planet that looks like Earth but apparently is called K. When they get involved in a scrap with a bunch of bullies, the three friends end up being dunked into rainbow coloured toxic waste – and we all know that can have consequences!
The dousing in this liquid has unexpected results. Anytime any one of them sneezes they are immediately transported into their adult bodies, twenty years into the future. Seems a perfectly reasonable means of time travel! However their future selves aren’t quite what they hoped for… Cheng Yong Wang (Yang Song) is part of an organ trafficking outfit, Zha Wang (Ruoyun Zhang) is a photo journalist infatuated with colleague Liu Lianzhi (Elane Zhong) and Pao Pao (Chenhao Li) is the only one happy with what he sees – though it may have consequences for their teenage relationship. As for Yi Yang (Yanmanzi Zhu), I’ll leave you to discover what has happened to her.
The often deliriously daft plot also takes a darker turn as nefarious forces are at work in the 2019 world. Frenetic and sometimes silly, writer/director Yang Li mixes in comic book stylings, with video game violence to create a bonkers, though ever entertaining melange of ideas, which will have you laughing one minute and shocked the next. Throwing lots of disparate elements in does mean that it doesn’t always hang together and it gets a bit convoluted at times. The device of changing screen ratios is cleverly used to depict the 1999 world in a square format, and extra wide for the future environment.
Steve Kirkham
