Taxi! Taxi!
Kelvin Sng
The story: Prof Chua (Gurmit Singh) ends up driving a cab after going through a string of jobs, keeping this from his wife (Jazreel Low) and son. The streetsmart Ah Tau (Mark Lee) shows the booksmart Chua the ropes and also inadvertently spills the beans for the ex-professor. Meanwhile, Ah Tau has problems of his own. He is raising his young son (Chua Jin Sen) without a mother while pining for his tenant Regina (Gan Mei Yan).

Just to be clear, this is not the big-screen adaptation of the best-selling Diary Of A Taxi Driver: True Stories From Singapore’s Most Educated Taxi Driver (2010). Instead, the real-life Dr Cai Mingjie who wrote the memoir is merely inspiration for director Kelvin Sng’s movie.
Gurmit Singh’s overqualified cabbie Prof Chua is something of a stick-in-the-mud and his pride prevents him from being honest with his family about being fired from several jobs. He even lies about why a school visit to the lab his son thinks he is still working at is out of the question.
Mark Lee’s Ah Tau is the counterpoint to the strait-laced Chua. He is poorly educated, flouts the rules and is a loving if absent-minded father.
So yes, this is an odd-couple comedy of sorts.
Ah Tau gets Chua to loosen up and Chua teaches Ah Tau about responsibility.
Quite a bit has been made of the fact that Singh and Lee are reuniting in a feature film 11 years after the soccer comedy One Leg Kicking (2001). But frankly, their much-vaunted chemistry has been overhyped. On screen, they neither fizzle nor sizzle.
The chemistry is instead to be found between Lee and his adorable young co-star Jin Sen, who are totally believable as father and son.
Casting Jin Sen, better known as Dr Jia Jia from his popular Singlish comic skits on YouTube, was a smart move. He gets to milk his signature Hokkien catchphrase “kee chiew” (raise your hands) and steals every scene he is in, whether he is sulking over his father’s broken promises or gamely trying to rouse Ah Tau from sleep.
Lee is natural and persuasive as the irresponsible but ultimately good-hearted Ah Tau. It turns out that Lee can act when he is not too busy mugging for the camera.
Too bad the movie also spends less time on Singh’s Chua and his less engaging problems with his family. On top of his wife and son, he has to cope with a disapproving mother-in-law.
This might be actress-turned-entrepreneur Jazreel Low’s return to acting but it is not a role that calls for her to do much beyond looking worried and harried.
After a while, the film has nowhere to go and so the ending takes an odd turn into melodrama.
Taxi! Taxi! had potential for insightful and much-needed social commentary but ends up being an uneven ride.
(ST)