Imperfect
Steve Cheng
The story: Teenagers Jianhao (Edwin Goh) and Zach (Ian Fang) are best buds who join a gang headed by Zhihua (Li Nanxing). The two friends are pulled in different directions – Zach is seduced by the easy money that comes from peddling drugs while Jianhao aims to complete his O levels with help from the studious Shanshan (Kimberly Chia). Tragedy strikes when the hot-headed pair get into a fight with the rich brat Alex (Xavier Ong) and they find themselves in bigger trouble than they ever could imagine.

The Channel 8 juvenile delinquency television drama On The Fringe (2011) turned its young leads Edwin Goh, Ian Fang, Kimberly Chia, Elizabeth Lee and Phua Yida into overnight stars.
At a fan meet held last September, 2,000 fans turned up to show their love and support for them despite a drizzle. The next logical step was to parlay their small-screen success into a movie.
Imperfect features the five young actors as well as veteran Li Nanxing from the TV show. But while it covers similar ground of good-at-heart bad kids, the characters here are different.
Goh is watchable as a young man trying to do the right thing, managing to pull off the different sides to his character Jianhao in his interactions with his family and friends.
Sullen and curt with his mother (Taiwanese TV actress Chiang Tsu-ping), he is fiercely loyal when it comes to his buddies, and then with Shanshan, he reveals an impish likability.
Compared to the fully fleshed-out Jianhao, the others are mostly one-note: Fang’s hot-headed Zach is seduced by easy money, Lee is his shallow girlfriend, Chia is the serious and studious girl and Phua, the bumbling friend.
Still, the young actors bring their On The Fringe chemistry to this movie and make their interactions believable.
Clearly, movie and TV producers are eager to bottle their camaraderie for profit – Goh, Fang, Chia and Phua are currently in the Channel 8 school drama Don’t Stop Believin’.
Unfortunately, the film has a tendency to sink into melodrama, perhaps because Hong Kong director Steve Cheng had cut his teeth on TVB dramas.
The late revelations about Jianhao’s parentage are unconvincingly shoehorned into the script, while Jianhao’s unexpectedly tender relationship with his younger sister, touching at first, soon becomes an overused device.
Adding to these woes is the uneven tone of Imperfect – Jianhao’s mother’s limp-wristed suitor (Taiwan’s Li Pei-hsu) strikes an off-note and Hong Kong veteran Liu Kai Chi as the psycho triad boss father of Alex seems to be in a different gangland flick.
At least the producers were honest when coming up with a title for the movie.
(ST)