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Happy Times [DVD] [2002] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

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Format: DVD
4.6 out of 5 stars 9 customer reviews
1 new from £59.94 6 used from £3.19

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Product details

  • Language: Chinese
  • Subtitles: English, French
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 1.85:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00006RCL3
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 434,315 in DVD & Blu-ray (See Top 100 in DVD & Blu-ray)

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Product Description

Zhao is an aging bachelor who hasn't been lucky in love. Thinking he has finally met the woman of his dreams, Zhao leads her to believe he is wealthy and agrees to a wedding far beyond his means. Zhao's best friend Li hatches the idea to raise the money by refurbishing an abandoned bus, which they will rent out by the hour--the Happy Times Hotel--to young couples starved for privacy. Unfortunately, this plan goes awry because Zhao is too old fashioned to allow the couples to leave the bus door closed. Meanwhile, Zhao's fiancee introduces him to her spoiled son and beautiful blind stepdaughter Wu Ying, whom she sees as a burden. To be rid of the girl, she insists that Zhao take her to the Happy Times Hotel and give her a job. Zhao reluctantly agrees, then creates a series of deceptions to keep the girl occupied, including setting her up as a masseuse and enlisting his friends to pretend to be her customers. Everything that is happening between Zhao and Wu is superficially about trickery, but gradually a very real empathy grows between the young woman and the old man.

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Customer Reviews

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsHidden gem
By Mr. Quentin Newark on 3 Sept. 2008
Format: DVD
This is a beautiful film, deeply touching. A bachelor goes in search of a wife. This being China, he wants his wife to bring him status, and lies about his own status... this shallowness is wonderfully exposed when he ends up caring for a blind girl, he lies that he can give her work as a masseuse in his hotel. He has to call on his friends, and they painstakingly construct a massage-parlour in their disused steel-mill, and then pretend to be her customers - which results in some scenes I will never forget. The parlour is meant to be an intimate space, but instead it is sat in a huge warehouse, with an audience. The humour is gentle, coming from the silly and increasingly tenuous situation, and the charming, bumbling, out-of-their-depth but well-meaning old people. The film is about contrasts; shallowness and depth of character, pretend and real feelings, selfishness and sacrifice. The film's message is as profound as it gets: if you don't take risks, you will never discover yourself.
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5.0 out of 5 starsBeautiful
By J. Baldwin VINE VOICE on 24 Mar. 2012
Format: DVD Verified Purchase
This is a beautiful film - but it takes you in a lot of different directions, starting off seemingly as an outright comedy but quickly veering into social commentary, then touching melodrama and ultimately... well, that would spoil it for you.
The cover of the DVD says it's "an hilarious look at life and the pursuit of happiness" which is perhaps the worst description I can imagine. Yes it's funny - I laughed out loud on several occasions - but that tag line makes it sound like some bad romcom. It isn't. It's a touching story and if you've not got a tear in your eye at the end there's something wrong with you.

I think I'll be watching this every so often. Best purchase in a long time.

The film cost me about £3 - best £3 I've spent in a long time. And I'm now in love with the leading actress. The DVD transfer looks great. The soundtrack is clear (well, as clear as you can expect if your Mandarin is as bad as mine) and there's sparing but effective use of the surround track.
The disc is bare-bones. No special features at all (although as I rarely make use of those, it's no loss). The menu doesn't seem to work for me - I couldn't tell if I'd turned subtitles on or off so had to do it with my remote to make sure. There's an annoying announcement at the start about how the disc is for retail only and how you can phone a number to turn someone in if they had the affront to rent it to you... why do DVD companies do this? It ruins the whole mood and if I were a film director I'd have the people who make these things shot.
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4.0 out of 5 starsA Great Director at work!!!!
By nmollo VINE VOICE on 11 Jun. 2007
Format: DVD Verified Purchase
Xingfu Shiguang (2000) or "Happy Times Hotel" is a gem of a film. It has some laugh-out load moments yet is perfectly balanced with tragedy. It reminded me somewhat of Mike Leigh's "All Or Nothing".

The acting, as with all films directed by Zhang Yimou, is of the highest caliber. Not one performance can be faulted.

The editing and camera work again cannot be faulted. The art direction was perfect.

The more I see this director's work the more I feel he is the most talented film director alive today. He continues to produce motion pictures of such a high standard and with such consistency that comparisons are bound to be made.
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4.0 out of 5 starsA older man and a blind girl meet by chance, but can they be happy?
By Carno Polo on 3 Feb. 2016
Format: DVD
This movie is not as flashy or stunning as some of the other ones for which Zhang Yimou is so famous. And while he launched the careers of several great actresses, Jie Dong is perhaps the least celebrated when compared to Gong Li or Zhang Ziyi.

But this is a very good movie in its own, more subtle, nouanced and delicate way. It is a story of the search of happiness, and of how one can be led off the beaten track to find it.

It is also a movie to be watched by foreigners to learn about daily life in China. Modernization of the cities and rapid growth of wild private enterprise, for one. But more interestingly, one learns how a single man in his fifties is a social basket case and must overcome impossible odds to find a wife. Which is odd, considering that China, because of the one-child policy, has a surplus of women. And especially a surplus of single women in their late twenties, thirties and forties: the women who, unlike their mothers, got an education and started a career, and did not rush to get married in their early twenties or ever earlier.

One also learns about some physical features the Chinese especially value: a man may look for a fat woman "to keep him warm". And both men and women pay a lot of attention to whether a potential partner has a single eye lid or a double one, which is highly prized (see picture).

The ending is a bit of a mystery: both Zhao and Wu Ying are posivite and energetic, and they could have accepted reality and build a father/daughter relationship and move forward together, but they don't. No one seems to have found their "happy times", and they don't have much hope ever to do so.
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3.0 out of 5 starsUltimately Disappointing
By Mr. K. J. Mckenna on 25 Mar. 2007
Format: DVD
I really wanted to like this film - and there are some things to like about it - but in the end, it fails. The publicity for this film repeatedly calls it `hilarious'; it isn't. It does have its amusing moments and it is not without charm, but it isn't a funny film. There is tenderness from the character of Zhao, ably played by Zhao Benshan, from his friends and from the character of Wu, a competent performance by Dong Jie. Zhao is a lonely bachelor trying to find a wife. The repulsive character he pursues dumps her blind stepdaughter on him, believing him to be a hotel owner - a deception he has encouraged to improve his standing. He constructs an elaborate sham to convince Wu that she is a gainfully employed person. Of course, the deception fails and she reveals that she knew it all along - and there the film just stops and she wanders off alone.

This is not an enigmatic ending with viewers left to project their own interpretation of where it goes from there - it just stops as if everyone had got bored with it and decided to call it a day. It is less than the sum of its parts, which is a pity because it could have been a good film. In the end though, it is just disappointing.
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