My Wife is 18
Director: James Yuen
Year: 2002
Rating: 5.5
I needed a sugar
injection – a head buzz - something to make my teeth ache and my brain
rot – yes it was Twins time. Of course having already previously imbibed
Just One Look and Summer Breeze of Love I had to settle for a half pack of
Charlene – I wait anxiously for The Twins Effect after which the Twins will
officially rule the world and bring peace to all mankind. Ten minutes with
The Twins and Osama would be humming “Melody Fair”, five minutes with The
Twins and George W. Bush would be hugging them, praising the Lord and bringing
the troops home, two minutes with the Twins and Bill Clinton would be hitting
on them. But until The Twins Effect comes out, I have to get by with their
songs taking up residence in my CD player and their musical videos on my
DVD player. And ya – there is also that Twins calendar on my bureau and a
cardboard Twins bookcase sitting on my floor for no good reason – and maybe
a few buttons of Gillian in my drawer. Damn where’s my Twins toothbrush.
Now Charlene without Gillian is kind of like Paul without John. On his own
Paul turned out saccharine dreck like Silly Love Songs and Beware My Love
while those same sugary instincts came out with John as And I Love Her and
I’ll Follow the Sun. Gillian gives Charlene a little edge, keeps her cuteness
in check and never allows her to get uncontrollably cloying – they play off
each other nicely. Now playing off Ekin Cheng is an entirely different matter
– it’s more like bouncing a rubber ball against a wall and then catching
it – you move, the wall does not. She buzzes around a near-comatose Ekin
like a young hummingbird on cocaine – one second pouting, the next gleefully
laughing – her face a carousel of changing expressions. I knew I was in trouble
when during the opening credits there is a series of pictures of Charlene
making faces – ones like scrunching up your face or sticking out your tongue
– I thought she was eighteen, not eight. Sad to say I found her rather .
. . adorable! She is the perfect stuffed toy.
Except this stuffed toy gets it on! Lets digress to the beginning of this
shocking episode in which a Twin loses her innocence – and I was certain
that Gillian would be the first to go down. Ekin is living in England doing
his best imitation of Stonehenge when Charlene shows up in an attempted arranged
marriage of the two. With a wide disparity in age and talent, they laugh
it off initially but decide to get married for one year to make Ekin’s grandmother
happy and after the vows they then go their separate ways. But like a bad
case of acne Ekin soon shows up on her doorstep in Hong Kong and just sort
of hangs around. In fact he becomes a teacher of psychology at Charlene’s
school and ends up on top of the very curvy gym teacher.
The inherent drama from this set-up is Proustian in nature and kept me on
the edge of my seat – the truth of the human condition revealed like a hidden
sore – will Charlene win the “Miss Flat Bust” contest, will her pout get
caught in the door, will Ekin go make another Not so Young and Dangerous
film, will Gigi come to her senses, will the Twins ever break up – God I
hope not. At some point the two of them end up under the sheets and I wanted
to either call the firemen or the SPCTSA (The Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Stuffed Animals). In truth the film does have a few rather
amusing bits (the In the Mood for Love parody) and Charlene is an adorable
wind-up tinker toy – but the fact is that even for a silly comedy that has
more fluff than a Sandra Dee film it is rather unintentionally creepy because
Ekin is far too old for her – he is thirty going on fifty while she is eighteen
going on twelve – it is like watching a pedophile rapidly zipping his pants
at a Boy Scout convention and wanting to reach for a baseball bat.
