BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (1986) **1/2 I know that some people love this movie, but I think they may have taken some of that potion that allows you to see things that others can not. John Carpenter takes his shot at mixing the spectacular and various visual comedy of a latter-day Pink Panther films with the über-camp of Rocky Horror, then throwing in bits and pieces of an overtly superficial stab at Chinese mysticism including teleporting wizards and transmognification, trucker mentality, weird monsters, lasers and smoke, neon, rain. Comedy and horror, it's a San Francisco flick. It doesn't come off all that badly, actually. Carpenter never realizes the heights-or depths-he was shooting for, but it all comes reasonably close. Kurt Russell could never miss as the red-meat American boy thrown into all this Chinese business, but for all of her efforts at vapid as a virtue Kim Cattrall never quite achieves the zero dimensionality that she would come to embody in "Sex in the City." Which is awful but would have been more appropriate, this almost stuff is neither endearing nor particularly entertaining. Suzee Pai seems more promising, but they keep her unconscious for most of the film. It's fun, and it makes you want to go back to Chinatown, just to see if you really did miss something.
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