After 40 minutes watching it patiently (searching for understandable lines),I had to turn it off in HUGE disappointment because my patience is limited. Indeed I WAS a fan of Jay Chou but recently he has let me down by both his singing and acting career. The movie "Bu neng shou de mi mi" made a good impression on me while Chou' latest movie is just a piece of crap!I really feel sorry for Chou's fans and ex-fans who put their trust in this unbearable movie. I could not understand how Jay Chou would acted as badly as he did in this movie. His appearance which made him look like a 40-year-old miserable man was extremely ridiculous (but it helped in some way 'cuz Chi Ling is 5 year older than him!) Can anyone who has watched this film find the 2 main characters (played by Chou and Chi Ling)feel for each others? Besides, the action scenes were pompous with nothing worth seeing. And Chi Ling's acting contributed greatly to the failure of this movie. When you look at her "acting skills", her facial expressions, you find nothing. She made you think that when she smiled it was not that she was cheerful and there were nothing sad enough to cry for when she cried (her reaction after being informed about her father' death is a great example)I wonder why such a model could have been selected to act in a movie? I have a piece of advice to you all: if you don't mind being treated or wasting your time, go see this movie!

THE TREASURE HUNTER is one of those Asian variants on INDIANA JONES that do the rounds occasionally. If you want to see a good example of this genre, check out the 1980s gem MAGNIFICENT WARRIORS, in which Michelle Yeoh whips up a storm in a fun, action-packed ride. By contrast, THE TREASURE HUNTER is amateurish and dull, a film with a muddled story and very little elements of interest.

Jay Chou always seems to be one of those disappointing actors to me who fails to make an impact in his starring roles. He's like Mars but without the genuine humour or talent. In this one, he plays an adventurer who has to battle a ghostly army for possession of a secret treasure. The usual bunch of foreign villains, pretty girls, and dedicated rivals are along for the ride, alongside a slumming-it Eric Tsang who tries ever so hard. This film features the usual unremarkable CGI effects and wirework-enhanced fight scenes; it feels like it wants to be THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, albeit on a much smaller budget. I wasn't impressed.

For what it's worth, I had rather enjoyed the first Kevin Chu - Jay Chou cinematic collaboration in Kung Fu Dunk. Thinking that their follow up film in The Treasure Hunter would be somewhere along the same vein, despite the obvious lifts from films such as Indiana Jones, The Mummy franchise and just about every desert based Hollywood film out there, I'd had rather they really go all out to copy those elements outright, than to come up with this half baked film doomed with a nonsensical story plagued with bad acting throughout.

I suppose the pairing of two of the hottest Taiwanese celebrities in Jay Chou and Lin Chiling (after her maiden outing in John Woo's Red Cliff) would be a no brainer, except that the attempt here is pretty much lame (oh how I hate to use this word), since a supposed romance turned out to be worse than the indecisive ones faced by the lovebirds from Twilight. Here there is absolutely zero chemistry between the leads, in a romance that's plagued by a courtship full of crap dialogue that will make you foam in the mouth, and a love that's so cloy and coy, that it'll make Bella and Edward look like they actually know what they're doing.

Lin Chiling had admitted that her character Lan Ting was done in a chaste manner so as not to ire Jay Chou's female fans, but I thought that is only an excuse, since the film had only one cheesy seduction scene to boast of, and even that came across as quite amateurish. Then again, perhaps this is not a romance film, but one steeped in action and adventure, since Jay Chou's character has a stylish name in Qiao Fei, some incredible powers a couple of notches up against Indiana Jones, and with a morally upright calling in life to return all antiques to their rightful place?

Wrong on that count as well. In fact, this is more of an unintentional comedy with some really bad villains who pop up now and then just to satisfy their sado-masochistic tendencies in having their arses kicked by Qiao Fei. There's a mummy man who looked as if he stepped out of a toilet wrapped from head to toe with toilet paper that just won't run out, a ghoul and a gang leader decked out in armour which were nothing more than sideshow villains, and a group of common thugs termed the Sandstorm Legion (ooh) who decided their outing should involve pulling down the structure of the only bar in the middle of nowhere. Or how about the "mysterious" desert eagle who's supposed to be the messiah and guardian of all things surrounded by sand dunes?

The entire film is one big schizophrenic affair in not knowing what it wants to do with itself, other than to milk the money off fans of Jay Chou and Lin Chiling (if she has any to begin with). Characters are tossed around with zero motivation or purpose, being in the film for the sake of. There's absolutely no plot here other than everyone trying to get their hands on a treasure map first, then to follow the markings to some mysterious area as marked out for the promise of treasure. Yawn.

And in between there's Chen Daoming and Eric Tsang (allowed in the film to switch between Cantonese and Mandarin) with the former being a poser, and the latter being the loud mouth, complementing each other as a duo out on their last adventure, one having plenty of emo moments to reflect upon, which is uninteresting to begin with. For the most parts they look like a lost duo roaming around waiting to pass time, contributing to the ensemble of wandering, mindless characters talking rubbish, given the nonsensical plot. Then again, having 5 writers contributing succumbed to the adage of having too many cooks, and one wonders if all had been smoking something to write something so comical as this film.

If there are those who are still holding on to slivers of hope that Kevin Chu can still make a decent film, this one will pulp all that to the ground pronto. The film's all over the place, with laughable action sequences. Clearly he has some fantasies about the good old dynamite sticks which can blow up like cluster bombs, or got too engrossed in the special effects that, hmm, what's the point of it all again?

There's one thing this film confirms though, it's that Jay Chou cannot act and his game is up - he's a one-expression chap made to look good thanks to wire-fu stunts. That however does not bode well for his Hollywood stint as Kato, since he has huge shoes to fill in, that of Bruce Lee's. I hope for the sake of The Green Hornet that he would have done miles better than this terribly dismal effort, clearly made just to milk off his popularity and the festive period.

One of the worst movies this year, and definitely not something that you'd want to ruin your start to 2010 with. Avoid at all costs, even the DVD.