Timeless Love
Dasmond Koh, Lim Koong Hwee

A lazy script, leaden acting and lacklustre direction make for a disappointing feature-film debut by television host Dasmond Koh. The movie was co-directed by MediaCorp veteran Lim Koong Hwee.
The story is largely set on a fantasy resort island from which adults seem to have been banished. Eden (Joshua Ang from We Not Naughty) and his younger sister Xiaowei (Kimberly Chia) run the place.
They cater to rich kid Morgan (We Not Naughty’s Shawn Lee lookalike Aloysius Pang), his good friend Sky (the cheery and cheeky Xu Bin, who is about the only actor who emerges unscathed) and Morgan’s on-off girlfriend Pepper (Josephine Chan). There is also a lone photographer Uri (Eugene Lim) thrown into the mix.
Morgan is searching for his late grandmother’s connection to the island and, disconcertingly, she appears to him as a young woman (Cynthia Ruby Wang) rather than as an old woman.
After the set-up, the film-makers have no idea what to do, so they pile on preposterous plot turns while the characters speak in cliches or, worse, in stilted voiceovers.
A scheming adult character turns up at the end threatening to take over the resort, and has his flunkey pick open a safe with a piece of wire in broad daylight. It is enough to make one laugh out loud.
The movie is desperately trying to masquerade as a fluffy Taiwanese idol drama but it simply falls flat.
(ST)