Synopsis: ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ is an extremely rare example of science fiction, Hong Kong style, but, fittingly, it’s unlike any sci-fi flick you’ve ever seen. Alien abductions, suicide pacts, superstardom, and the reality of science fiction itself is spotlighted in this bright, crazy, truly out of this world epic — one of the more unusual movies in the Hong Kong cinema of the early 1980s. And if you know 80’s Hong Kong cinema at all, you know that’s really saying something!
***********************************************************************

Xing ji dun tai 3.0*

‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ is a picture that you can’t really explain. In fact, until this viewing (my umpteenth time! It’s a late-night guilty pleasure ), I simply couldn’t wrap my mind around the storyline and found it all too disjointed to actually understand it fully. I don’t really know why, quite frankly, because it’s clear to me now:

An alien ship is sighted and a duo of investigator arrive on the scene, offering their help to local authorities but being rebuffed. We soon discover that they are scrounging for gigs, barely making ends meet. Meanwhile, a beautiful but extremely unlucky girl finds love with a rich man, however his father won’t allow the marriage – especially after she gets abducted by the aforementioned UFO.

The lives of the investigators and the girl will irrevocably change when they cross paths on their way to the bottom. Their fortunes change dramatically: she will find superstardom while they will track the aliens and succeed in revealing them to the world – only to see their lives unravel yet again, and find each other anew.

Cut to happy ending. Wee.

It may not seem like much at first glance, but ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ is karazzay. Like, seriously, completely mental. On the one hand it’s a comedy. But it’s also a drama. It throws into the mix science-fiction elements (including parodic sequences based on ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and ‘Star Wars’), musical numbers, cartoon animation, and even schlocky horror. It’s truly all over the map.

And, for me, that’s what makes it such a blast. Frankly, it’s hard to be bored when your head is ceaselessly spinning from all the stuff going on. I mean, not only did they take tons of genres, toss them in a cinematic blender and hit “frappé”, but the filmmakers also cut the film in a ramshackle, kinetic fashion that isn’t always cohesive – so you have keep your wits about you to even attempt to follow it.

But that’s also part of the problem, and it’s why I’d say that, technically, this is a horrible film – hence the rating. One moment you’re watching a lightsaber duel, and the next you’re jumping to a completely unrelated sequence with no end to the previous one. It’s perfect for the ADD generation, but it doesn’t make any sense – you have to fill in a lot of blanks along the way because the filmmakers make a lot of assumptions and don’t actually connect the dots for their audience.

And it’s not just the filmmakers that make it challenging: the actors and other performers also give audiences a good run for their money. Let’s just say that these were all very enthusiastic, but unexceptionally talented people. That first musical number alone is proof of how… um… very average the talent could be here: not only was the choreography completely off, but the dancing skills were lackluster to say the least. Total amateur hour – but with big league ambition.

Even the humour was often too corny or dorky to elicit chuckles. But there is so much manic energy leaping off the screen that it’s veritably impossible to not laugh along giddily at all the madness and shake one’s head at just how nutty it all is. If it were all a coordinated -but failed- effort to be funny, it might prove intolerable, but, as I watch ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, I get the impression that most of it is eagerness gone awry – and I find this unbelievably entertaining.

Thus I wouldn’t actually recommend this picture to most people. In fact, this would hurt the average viewer, maybe even damage them permanently. However, I think that someone who likes kitsch, who revels in the so-bad-it’s-good, might consider this low-budget throw-away from Hong Kong a real find, a gem. Hey, there must be a reason why it’s still floating around out there, passed around in a virtual paper bag, right?

Personally, I have not seen anything like it anywhere else, and I suspect that I never will. It’s become one of those cult favourites of mine – it’s much like that weird piece of crap that you find on the sidewalk one day, abandoned, that intrigues you enough that you take it home, that puts a smile on your face every time that you see it on your shelf.

For some of us, ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ is one of those things that inexplicably shines a welcome light in your life like nothing else does or could ever hope to. It’s akin to a shooting star: there are no two like it, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience – it whizzes by you, and before you know it, it’s gone. But, if you actually take notice of the moment, you’ll remember it forever.

* nota bene: while I have to give the film a 3.0 rating based on its quality, my enjoyment level is more akin to a 7.0. Approach it with this in mind.