Egg and Stone (2023) - Final Review
Final review/rating: Egg and Stone (2023) - A wuxia parody romp with zombies
This is 7.5/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮ from Pandafan🐼
Overall rating: 7.5 Stars Plot: 7 Stars Acting/cast: 7 Stars Couple chemistry: 7.5 stars Music: 7 Stars Re-watch value: 7 Stars Enjoyment factor: 7.5 Stars |
It does help if you can understand Mandarin, as there is some deliberate mangling of the language and some funny homophones and cultural references which probably get lost in translation. But even if you don't, there is still plenty to laugh at. Also, an English drama title that is apt, perhaps even more so than the Chinese one - this must be a first in c-drama land surely. Will wonders never cease?😅
For once the English title of the drama is thematically meaningful, even if somewhat cryptic and entirely different from the Chinese title, "少女闖江湖" / "少女闯江湖", which is so literal it describes exactly what the drama is about: "A Young Girl embarks on Jianghu travels".
The duo are joined by Li Zhao Zhao's Jiang Bu Ying (Jiang Bu Ting's himbo of a little brother) and Zhang Chu Han's Mu Yao Guang (Mu Bing He's little sister, who, like Huo Xing Chen has escaped home disguised very unconvincingly as a man, to reunite with Quan Xia/ Hero O). Quite a lot of fun is had with Jiang Bu Ying's obliviousness to Mu Yao Guang's disguise even when her moustache and beard keep going missing like bad continuity editing in a budget movie. Of course these two also end up as a cute CP.
There are also some homophones, such as Jiang Bu Ting's name, 蔣步汀, which also sounds like 講不聽 (literally "speak, not listen", so someone who just won't understand). Bu Ting 不聽 is basically what you hear from a screaming toddler when they refuse to listen - 不聽!不聽!不聽!😅
🐼: Egg and Stone (2023) is an enjoyable wuxia parody romp, complete with romance and zombies. Not meant to be taken seriously at all, and as such, is a delightfully stress free drama to watch. The comedy may not tickle everyone's funny bone, but it certainly made me chuckle a lot! 😆
The drama gets a bit draggy midway through and becomes noticeably less funny, but I think this is still a good pick for when you just want a stress free watching experience. There is also some fluffy romance in the mix.
This drama must have been fun to shoot and it shows in the way Wu Xi Ze and Xu Lu fully commit to the silly - who knew that they had such decent comic timing?😆
SPOILERS AHEADS
Plot: A parody on wuxia tropes and "egg and stone" as recurring motif
For a spoiler free synopsis, see mine 👉 here.
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| Ep 24: "以卵擊石": Jiang Bu Ting and Huo Xing Chen sum it up |
Egg and Stone on the other hand, is a play on the Chinese idiom "以卵擊石" / "以卵击石" which literally means "using an egg to strike a stone". In other words, an attempt to do the impossible (and/or pejoratively, to invite disaster by overreach). The egg and stone idiom is a recurring motif throughout the drama, but the drama flips the negative on its head to be a positive. Sunny side up as it were!
The drama's take on the idiom is basically our female lead Huo Xing Chen (played by Xu Lu) in a nutshell (or should that be egg-shell😅). Although Huo Xing Chen is her father's handpicked heir for the Wu Yue Sect, she actually knows no martial arts and has no internal force/内力. Problem is, she is entirely oblivious to this, and thinks she is a kickass warrior. Not her fault really, as everyone in the Wu Yue Sect has been 'protecting' her from this knowledge for years, falling like dominoes when she 'fights' them to make her believe she is invincible.
When her overprotective father arranges a matrilocal marriage for her with her childhood friend Mu Bing He (played by Wang Yi Lun), she is not keen. On paper, he is everything a girl could want and also hilariously aware of it, but Huo Xing Chen has always dreamed of being a hero in her own right (and who says girls can't?) So she escapes to go jianghu adventuring and to find her childhood hero Cha Xia叉俠/ Hero X, later styling herself as Quan Xia 圈俠/ Hero O in homage.
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| When a Man loves a Zombie: chin scratches! 💕 |
Along the way she meets the sickly but talented martial artist Jiang Bu Ting (played by Wu Xi Ze) who is investigating the mysterious disappearances of martial artists. Knowing she has no martial arts at all, Jiang Bu Ting wants to return Huo Xing Chen to the safety of her home, but she insists on doing her bit to solve the mystery. After all, as she explains, Cha Xia once told her that with great 'power' comes great responsibility (a nod to Marvel's Spiderman, perhaps, from one hero to another?😅)
Huo Xing Chen does find out that she is entirely powerless as a martial artist rather early in the piece, but that doesn't stop her throwing herself into jianghu adventures with heroic gusto, even if she is an "egg" striking at a "stone". Along the way, love blossoms between Huo Xing Chen and Jiang Bu Ting. I'm not exactly sure when, but it may have been when she gets zombified protecting him but still resists 'turning' with all her feeble might, cute fangs and all, and warms Jiang Bu Ting's cynical heart into tickling her chin and trying to find a cure.
Although the plot does not bear close scrutiny, there is some rather tongue-in-cheek lampooning of the wuxia genre. For example:
- Baddies out for global dominance using mind control medicines to zombify martial artists;
- Girl falling for the heroine while they are both hilariously badly cross-dressed as men;
- Total powering up of internal force/内力 + instant martial arts prowess when the heroine fortuitously falls into a poison cauldron (honestly, Jin Yong would have approved);
- Oblivious himbo who can't figure out lady is clearly-a-lady-disguised-as-a-man antics (again, Jin Yong would have approved);
- The great reveal of Cha Xia/Hero X's true identity - no surprises, it's Jiang Bu Ting;
- Cures for deadly poisons all round (ML, FL, FL's father, zombified martial artists et al).
At the end, Huo Xing Chen becomes the Wu Ye Sect Leader in her own right after all the baddies are defeated, and it's a HEA of course. As Jiang Bu Ting says to Huo Xing Chen - you protect wulin, and I will protect you💕
The Comedy - some hits and misses, but mostly fun!
The comedy tickled my funny bone. It is mostly of the goofy, slapstick variety, and not all of it worked, but I really enjoyed it when it did.
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| Wa's Canto-Mandarin inspired lols😂 |
Some of the humour does rely on an understanding of Mandarin. There are a lot of deliberately funky accents going on amongst the zombified martial artists, but Huo Jian Wa (Huo Xing Chen's older cousin and shi xiong) takes the cake in this aspect, as he is basically speaking Cantonese with a very bad Mandarin inflection, and for some reason this never failed to crack me up.
There are also some homophones, such as Jiang Bu Ting's name, 蔣步汀, which also sounds like 講不聽 (literally "speak, not listen", so someone who just won't understand). Bu Ting 不聽 is basically what you hear from a screaming toddler when they refuse to listen - 不聽!不聽!不聽!😅 And there was a priceless moment where Huo Xing Chen is hiding from Mu Bing He behind Jiang Bu Ting and he basically starts vocal rapping Teresa Teng's famous song Tian Mi Mi 甜蜜蜜/"Very sweet" - "在哪裡在哪裡看過你?"("Where, oh where, have I seen you before?") to try and clue in Mu Bing He, only for the latter to look at him like he has completely lost the plot. This is probably only laugh-out-loud funny if aware of Teresa Teng's song though?
Other humour just relied on an old-fashioned sense of the absurd. Too many to list, but special mentions to:
- Jiang Bu Ting drawing an egg as part of the matrilocal husband selection tests (which he did not intend to attend) and getting full marks for his depiction of the powerful source of life😆
- Huo Xing Chen rooftop sword dancing (think Li Xiang Yi from Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023) or similar), only for it to turn into... rave dancing to the tune of Jiang Bu Ting's crazy er-hu/Chinese violin beats😆
Huo Xing Chen getting poisoned and hallucinating that Jiang Bu Ting is a donkey, and she decides she needs to rideeeeeeee and everyone comes in thinking something else entirely and leaves them be... In the morning, Jiang Bu Ting tells her she has despoiled his 'innocence' and she says she will take full responsibility😆 A nod, I thought, to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Bottom the Ass? Possibly.
Making an ass of Donkey Jiang Bu Ting
- The tacky team "noughts and crosses" cloaks, which pretty much made me giggle every time there was a mock-serious poser moment.
Ah, I so enjoyed the sheer silliness in this drama! It's a pity that the silly doesn't last consistently throughout - midway through the drama seemed to lose its initial comedic mojo. But the whimsy was still there in sufficient quantities to make this drama a fun watch.
I've only seen Xu Lu in an angsty xianxia previously (Song of the Moon (2022)) so I had no idea she could be so funny. Ditto with Wu Xi Ze in that I have only seen him previously in idol period dramas playing the cool aloof type (General's Lady (2020); Heart of Loyalty (2021)) and on both occasions thought he was rather bland. But in Egg and Stone (2023) Wu Xi Ze really shines - he actually has some fantastic comic timing. Both leads also did their own dubbing, so hearing their original voices was a plus.
Final thoughts
I wish the drama had kept up the comedy more consistently throughout, as it did get a bit draggy and noticeably less funny midway through. It could probably have been several episodes shorter as well.
Don't even try to scrutinise the plot. Go with the absurdity and sheer silliness of it all instead, and cheer on good "egg" Huo Xing Chen, in a comedic world where an "egg" striking "stone" is not futility but strength, and where taking on the impossible leads to zero-to-hero power ups, de-zombification en masse, and a happily ever after.
7.5/10 stars ✮✮✮✮✮✮✮
