TL;DR – It is a genuinely odd film, sometimes weird, sometimes wondering, often fascinating, but it also has moments where you wonder what it is that you are watching.

Post-Credit Scene – There are mid-credit scenes and a slightly mean audio commentary at the end of the credits.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this film.

Miss Shampoo Review –

Tonight, as I was sitting here cursing the heat and the humidity, I thought I would take my mind off it by watching something different. It was at that moment that I realised that it had been a while since we dived into Taiwanese Cinema, and a new romantic comedy just dropped on Netflix.

So to set the scene, it is a rainy night as Fen (Vivian Sung) is practicing her haircutting technique in the salon. When Tai (Daniel Hong) crashes into the salon badly wounded. Thai mercenaries are chasing him, but some quick thinking from Fen saves his life. All the bosses in town are trying to work out who killed Tai’s Boss. But the last thing that Fen was expecting was to see Tai walk back into her salon to ask for a cut when she is only able to wash hair. Nor was she expecting the world she was about to enter.

This is the first time I have looked at a film from Giddens Ko, and a little research shows that they are a director/writer with a very particular style. So much so that it takes a bit to get used to when you first watch it oscillates between tones like a ball bouncing in a pinball machine. You can never quite get your bearings because the ground under your feet is constantly changing. You will be watching a hairdressing scene where there are chicken sounds inserted into the musical score in one moment and watching people get their fingers viciously removed and blood splatter moments later.

These dramatic shifts in tone are hard to follow at the start and happen so frequently that they usually break the audience with tonal whiplash. Here, it almost works because everyone is committed to the bit. Nearly every cast member is working in a different film genre, but they are all giving a 100% commitment to it … it kind of works. Some moments were too odd even for me, just about everything to do with Fen’s family. But you can’t help but get caught in the wake of this wave pool as it crashes around you.

There are these odd parts of the film that help drag you along, the first being the many, many, many different hairstyles of Tai throughout the film. They go through so many that I think they must be using some of that Stardust magic. Then there is the rest of the gang trying to teach everyone their names, which led to an odd moment when my name was used as a gag in a Taiwanese film, which was the one thing I would never have expected when I walked in. It is hard to say just what genre this film fits into. We would probably say that it is an action film smashed into a mob film that is flirting with a romantic comedy, but I am not sure that quite sums it up because we also take a detour to a Baseball/Sports film at some points and that is just scratching the surface of this film.   

All the action scenes are fascinating, with the last one in the film being my favourite. I know we are in the era of gun-fu films like John Wick, but nothing quite has the same impact as a baseball bat to the side of the head. While there was a lot of the film that I did like, I am not sure that they stuck the landing. I think for me, it was one tone shift too many and like a rubber band that you have stretched and stretched, eventually, it snaps.

In the end, do we recommend Miss Shampoo? I am not sure. I think it would be fascinating for people to watch, just to see the many wild swings in tone happen in real-time. However, I am not sure that this would resonate with a lot of people who are not familiar with the director’s style. If you liked Miss Shampoo, we would recommend to you Sisu.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Miss Shampoo
Directed by – Giddens Ko
Written by – Giddens Ko
Music by – Chris Hou
Cinematography by – Chou Yi-Hsien
Edited by – Milk Su
Production/Distribution Companies – Machi Xcelsior Studios, Harvest 9 Road Entertainment & Netflix
Starring – Daniel Hong, Vivian Sung, Kai Ko, Emerson Tsai & Ying Long-Feng with Chen Ming-Shu, Bai Bai, Miao Ke-Li, Kuo Tze-Cheng, Hong Sheng-Te, Chu Chung-Heng & Chung Hsin-Ling and Kongkiat Limpongsatorn, Duncan Chou, Lo Chien-Shao, Hsia Teng-Hung, Kent Tsai, Duan Chun-Hao, Hu Jhih-Ciang, Lin Chin-Ju, McFly Wu, Monmon Wu, Lena, Alice, Aurora & Bruce Ho
Rating – Australia: MA15+