The Lyricist Wannabe (2024)

Though it does labour the joke a little after a while, this is actually quite a fun story about a tenacious young student who is determined to be a lyricist. Despite the fact that her teacher (Pak Hon Chu) claims nobody ever makes money writing songs (he's clearly never heard of Don Black, or Sir Tim Rice or Bernie Taupin!), and the fact that she cannot actually read music, she perseveres. She's not having much luck though - most of her work ends up being "off-melody" - with some quite hilariously double-entendre consequences, but "Sze" (Suet-Ying Chung) is determined. Now it doesn't really help the gist of this that many of her rhymes go to prove the obvious point that English, Cantonese and Mandarin have completely different tones and rhyming points - and that means that sometimes the subtitled versions of her lyrics are borderline surreal. They don't scan in the slightest in just about any language and her attempts to find a musician and/or singer to work with just seem doomed to failure. She's persistent, though, and as the years go by she does just about everything to convince the record industry that her's is a skill they want! This works quite well at engagingly poking fun at the whole songwriting business. The haphazard way in which things work - or don't, the sheer luck involved, good looks, face fits, back-stabbing and well, you have to feel just a bit sorry for her long suffering boyfriend "Zeke" (Yukki Tai) and, for that matter, her easy on the eye chanteur "Mak" (Anson Chan) who constantly vacillates between encouraging and placating her somewhat erratic passion. It's a story about a dream (and for a listening audience - a nightmare) and is quite enjoyable to watch.