MY BEST FRIEND'S BREAKFAST (我吃了那男孩一整年的早餐) (2022)

Genre: Romance/Drama
Director: Du Zheng Zhe
Cast: Eric Chou, Moon Lee, Edison Song, Jean Ho, Lin He Xuan, SHOU, Darren Chiu, Chen Shu-Fang
Runtime: 2 hrs
Rating: PG13 (Some Mature Content)
Released By: Golden Village Pictures and Clover Films
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/MyBestFriendsBreakfast

Opening Day: 28 January 2022 

Synopsis: Xiang Weixin (played by Li Mu), a 17-year-old high school sophomore, regards eating as the most important and most healing thing in life. The first time she met her senior Tao Youquan (played by Zhou Xingzhe) was at the school’s welfare agency. At that time, Xiang Weixin lost 5 yuan and could not buy her favourite pineapple bread. Tao Youquan made up the money for her, which made her feel deeply indebted to him. The next day, she saw a breakup scene by the school’s swimming pool. Tao Youquan tried to break up with his cheating girlfriend but failed. Xiang Weixin used her best friend Fang Qiran (played by He Sijing) as an excuse to help Tao Youquan break up successfully and to return the favour. 

Movie Review:

High schooler Xiang Weixin (Moon Lee) is an unmotivated, ordinary girl who resorts to binge eating after the breakup of her parents’ marriage. When the leader of her guitar club promises a daily dose of milk tea as a bait, Weixin agrees to perform for the school graduation day. At her end, Weixin is actually hopeless with guitar.

Shortly after, Weixin manages to successfully mediate an awkward breakoff moment between her senior, Tao Youquan (Eric Chou) and his cheating girlfriend. To return his favour, Youquan offers to give Weixin free guitar lessons. But due to some misunderstandings or perhaps kismet, their romantic relationship fails to materialise and well to avoid a major spoiler, you need to catch My Best Friend’s Breakfast to find out if their love blossom in the end.

The biggest draw of this rom-com is none other than Eric Chou. Yes that Eric Chou or 周兴哲, the talented Taiwanese singer and composer who gave you that earworm of a song, 你, 好不好 (How Have You Been?). Making his screen debut right here as Youquan, the senior who both swims and plays the guitar well. In all fairness, the character of Youquan doesn’t really requires an ounce of acting ability from the singer even though he can be pretty awakwardly stiff and bland at times.

What’s more interesting is Moon Lee, the upcoming actress who starred in Terrorizers and Detention. As the movie’s main protagonist, Lee while not possessing the beauty traits of a typical female lead is generally charming and cute (not in an nauseously act cute kind of way). We are sure the self-doubting, insecure Weixin will appeal to the average teenager. With matters on love, ambition and family, Weixin certainly is a far more well-written character compared to the rest. There’s brief subplots about the broken love between Weixin’s parents and the reconciliation of Youquan’s grandma and his mom but then these are just unsatisfactory fillers to make up the running time.

The other strictly supporting characters include Weixin’s best friend, Qiran (Jean Ho) the school beauty who received free breakfast on a daily basis from Youquan, Edison Song who plays the leader of the guitar club and to no one surprise, is secretly in love with Weixin and lastly rapper SHOU who plays Qiran’s boyfriend. Clearly none of these characters play a critical role to the overall plotting. In fact, they are mere obstacles constructed to hinder the real romantic relationship between the leads. Well, Golden Horse award actress Chen Shu-fang has a role as Youquan’s stubborn grandma, her role might be small but her Taiwanese Hokkien is always a delight to hear.

My Best Friend’s Breakfast is ultimately yet another generic rom-com in which Taiwanese cinema has perfected the formula long ago. It has basically everything you can think of. Easy on the eyes leading stars, a romance that develops over time coupled with lots of misunderstanding along the way and a mesmerising theme song to end the movie experience. Remember Our Times and You Are the Apple of My Eye?

Movie Rating:

(Watch this mainly for Eric Chou and Moon Lee, not the 80’s action star by the way)

Review by Linus Tee