Singapore Comedy Inspired By `Saturday Night Fever'

Movie review XX 1/2 "That's the Way I Like It," with Adrian Pang, Caleb Goh, Madeline Tan, Anna Belle Francis. Directed and written by Glen Goei. 92 minutes. Broadway Market. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of momentary language and some violence.

While the 1977 disco phenomenon, "Saturday Night Fever," has been transformed into a London/Broadway stage success, this silly, uneven Singapore comedy revives it as an Eastern cultural icon that displaced Bruce Lee after he died in 1973.

"The excitement and energy of John Travolta and the disco culture helped fill that gap for many of us," explains the Singapore-born writer-director of "That's the Way I Like It," Glen Goei. He claims the English-language movie "captures my own journey from an Asian culture to a Western one."

Goei has cast an enthusiastic twentysomething actor, Adrian Pang, as his alter ego, Ah Hock, who works as a grocery clerk, lives with his parents and fantasizes about having a girlfriend and becoming a success at, well, something.

Then a cheaply made Travolta knock-off called "Forever Fever" replaces the kung-fu pictures at the local theater, and he finds himself hooked on disco, taking dance lessons from his old friend Mei (Madeline Tan) and planning to win $5,000 at a disco competition.

As Asian covers of "Stayin' Alive," "How Deep Is Your Love" and other Bee Gees hits fill the soundtrack, and a giant imitation-Travolta poster dominates a Singapore street, Goei sets out to suggest the gradual makeover of an island country that achieved independence from British rule only 34 years ago.

Unfortunately, his central plot is riddled with show-biz cliches that make Ah Hock's turnaround look like fantasy. He ignores Mei's feelings for him, begins to attract the interest of dance star Julie (Anna Belle Francis) and the enmity of her hoodlum boyfriend Richard (Pierre Png). It seems to take no effort at all to become a competition-ready dancer.

This cotton-candy story almost gets derailed by a serious subplot concerning Hock's younger brother, Leslie (Caleb Goh), who announces that he wants to become a woman. Leslie, who had been the parents' preferred brother, is thrown out of the house, and it's up to Ah Hock to win the contest so he can finance the sex-change operation.

Leslie's dilemma is actually handled with some sensitivity, and Goh plays this suddenly uncloseted character with considerable flair. There's a particularly memorable scene in which he appears in full drag, briefly convincing his own father that he's someone else. The brutal rejection that follows is out of some other movie. Perhaps a better one.

"That's the Way I Like It" is flashily made and it's certainly never boring. But mostly it suggests that Goei will do better next time, when he doesn't try to jam everything he has to say into one picture.