"21 and Over" is Two Movies in One

The upcoming "21 and Over" is being advertised in the U.S. as a typical raunchy comedy, about a straight-arrow Chinese-American college student, Jeff Chang (Justin Chon), whose two best friends Casey (Skylar Astin) and Miller (Miles Teller) take him out for a wild night on the town to celebrate his 21st birthday. You wouldn't guess that the movie had been partially funded by a group of Chinese companies, or that "21 and Over" is going to be getting a coveted theatrical release in China. However, Chinese audiences are going to be getting a different version of the movie, where Jeff is now a Chinese foreign exchange student who comes to the U.S., falls in the with wrong crowd, and learns the dangers of Western excess and hedonism before going home to China a wiser man. Additional scenes were shot in the city of Linyi to create the Chinese bookend sequences.

I can't help finding the whole situation incredibly funny. I've been increasingly worried at the prospect of Chinese funding having a bad influence on American filmmakers, but in this case the compromise that has been worked out is ingenious. The Chinese and American versions of "21 and Over" will largely be the same, but framed in such a way to reflect both cultures, and each version can be taken as a commentary on the values and mores of the other version. So what started out as a frat-humor laugh-fest from the guys who brought you "The Hangover" has inadvertently turned into a two-way meta funhouse mirror of a project with all sorts of interesting new dimensions to ponder over. Of course, there's the significant possibility that both versions are going to be terrible, as these kinds of movies too often are, but "21 and Over" will still be one of the most interesting examples of what Chinese/American filmmaking partnerships have produced.

There have been multiple versions of the same film made for different audiences before - it's actually quite commonplace in China because of their tighter restrictions on content. Hong Kong films like "Infernal Affairs" often have had to shoot different endings, showing that the bad guy was punished in the end, in order to appease conservative mainland censors. Most Hollywood films are edited for content, sometimes severely. "Cloud Atlas" recently lost a third of its running time and an entirely storyline involving a homosexual romance. However, I don't think I've ever seen a situation where the different versions of a film were so diametrically opposed to each other as in "21 and Over." The American version celebrates exactly the same behavior that the Chinese version is condemning. You're meant to root for American Jeff to keep partying and hope that Chinese Jeff can escape further corruption as they go through the same situations.

The idea of Western filmmakers going along with the Chinese companies' demands for aggressively pro-China content and stern criticism of the west never sat well with me. In this case, however, the target of that stern criticism is just drunken frat boy antics, which seems like such a fundamentally silly idea that I find it difficult to take it seriously at all. I expect the Chinese version is going to end up looking like one of those cheesy old TV movie-of-the-week melodramas, that played on the fears of Middle America by demonizing recreational drugs and the Internet. The motives of the Chinese producers are so transparent and so ridiculous, it's easy to see why the "21 and Over" filmmakers had no qualms about taking the money. Even if there's not a single joke in the Chinese version, there's a good chance it's going to deliver some laughs

I expect that this won't be the last time we see something like this happening, as Hollywood becomes more and more comfortable working with the Chinese. Maybe next time this kind of multiple version movie will be conceived on purpose. An action movie with an American star and a Chinese star could be billed with either lead as the headliner, depending on which country the movie was playing in. Marketing narratives do often have an effect on the viewing experience. There also are some slightly scary implications to this as well, the way one piece of media is being manipulated to convey two entirely different messages. If they can do this with a harmless comedy, they might try the same tactics with something more serious later on.

But for now, it'll be interesting to see how the two versions perform and what the reaction to them will be. And I can already see one net positive here. We've got a rare mainstream release starring an Asian American actor, Justin Chon, currently best known for appearing in the "Twilight" movies. Making two versions of “21 and Over” for two different hemispheres wouldn’t be possible without him.

This a very weird and unexpected road to more onscreen diversity, but I’ll take it.
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