Shanghai Surprise: How can you know what’s really good unless you watch what’s really bad? Legendary as one of the worst films of all time, “Shanghai Surprise” was a vanity project starring then-It Girl Madonna and her beau Sean Penn as a wide-eyed missionary and ne’er-do-well thrust together in pre-World War Shanghai, searching for a cache of lost opium that belonged an opium king now deceased named Faraday (Paul Freeman, more on him in a moment). On their trail are various Chinese no-good-niks who want the trove for themselves. This film has lots of problems, casting first. Penn and Madonna completely lack chemistry on screen, and Penn is hardly a dashing leading man in the Harrison Ford/pulp mold (he’s also inexplicably very tan). The plot is meandering and dull. And inexplicably, even though pop queen Madonna is the star, the bland soundtrack is furnished by George Harrison instead. Mostly this film just doesn’t live up to what it tries to be - it’s not funny when it attempts to be comedic, it’s not thrilling when it tries to be thrilling, and for an “adventure”, it’s almost terminally boring. And I’m agog as to how Paul Freeman, who has starred in some great films (“Raiders of the Lost Ark”, “Hot Fuzz”) also starred in some of the worst (this film and “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - The Movie”). The film was so poorly received on its release, director Jim Goddard hid out on British television for over a decade and out of the cinema. This one is as bad as its hype. Woodchuck sez, “Skip it.”
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