I LOVE MARIA (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*

I haven't seen a ton of Hong Kong comedies that I've liked, except in a "so bad they're good" way. But most of the jokes in I LOVE MARIA land pretty well. Producer Tsui Hark, who also donned writer and director hats for MARIA (albeit uncredited in many sources), shows at least as much talent for comedy as for the operatic action-films for which he's best known.

The film actually boasts two Marias (depending on what English translation you have), and both are played by Sally Yeh, though only the robotic Maria is meant to slightly evoke the female automaton from Fritz Lang's 1927 METROPOLIS. The first Maria belongs to a predacious band of high-tech criminals, the Hero Gang, and this Maria is obsessively in love with the robbers' leader, cited as "Lam" and played by one Ben Lam. Lam, acting much like one of the tech-savvy villains from the Fleischer SUPERMAN cartoons, has his own private inventor, who whips together a huge and very powerful robot, Pioneer One, in order to pillage Hong Kong. However, Lam is a little more perverse than any Superman villain. He orders his scientists to create a robotic double of Maria because Lam wants to transcend humanity (late in the film it's revealed that the villain has two metal arms, which is all the psychological explanation anyone's going to get). Robot Maria has no intelligence or self-awareness, but that doesn't stop Human Maria from resenting the hell of her theoretical replacement.

Two goofballs end up derailing Lam's plans for robot sex. Curley (John Sham) is a wacky inventor who doubles as some sort of reporter, and while visiting a bar he listens to the sad story of Whiskey (played by producer Hark), who's been a member of the Hero Gang but plans to leave them. One of Lam's minions gets wind of Whiskey's defection. Lam sends Robot Maria to kill Whiskey, and it's only by sheer dumb luck that Whiskey and his equally klutzy friend are able to deactivate the automaton before it kills them.

Whiskey gets Curley to help him drag the inert construct back to Whiskey's laboratory. Fearing that the robot may reboot and return to assassination mode, the two amateur inventors work to reprogram Maria. Without Whiskey's knowledge, Curley-- who fancies the sleek lines of the feminine killbot-- instills a program which can render Maria obedient to their will, but only if the command is preceded by the words "I love Curley." This is easily the funniest part of the film, though for once there are a lot of slapstick scenes that work just as well.

Production values are very high for a HK science-fiction film, particularly for a scene in which Robot Maria has to battle the bigger, bulkier Pioneer One. Still later Lam and Human Maria plan to murder a police investigator, but thanks to the two wackos, Robot Maria plays superhero, saves the cop and (with a little help from her masters) rounds up the Hero Gang. 

Though Sham and Hark make a good comedy team, Yeh is the most impressive actor here, thanks to her dual role as a merciless gun-moll and as an innocent, just-this-close-to-sentient robot.