Pluskylang Great Film overall

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Kimball Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Caryl It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Lester Mak (leekandham) A relatively early outing from three of the young talents of Eastern cinema, this was a demonstration of the future potential of its lead stars.Daniel Wu plays Joker, a young computer graphics designer tasked with designing the perfect female game character. Inspiration, however, is limited in his company as they design a beauty but lacks personality. In his search for ideas, he encounters Ling (Angelica Lee), a nightclub bar girl who peddles drugs to survive. Despite her beautiful shell, Joker and his brother, Kid (Edison Chen), discover a complex character with a dark background: a father in jail, a mentally ill mother, and a younger brother who seems always to be in the midst of trouble. And yet Joker's princess.Despite the cheesiness of the outline, the flesh is actually okay. Angelica Lee shines with her performance of a very complicated character, one that is in search of not so much happiness, but more of an average life, yet knows how to have fun. However, she is pretty much the only 3D character (indeed she is supposed to be in the computer game) in the whole film. Which did mean that Daniel Wu and Edison Chen didn't really have the challenge.The storyline, however, didn't match the quality of some of the performances. Never digging deep enough, never really explaining enough, it feels a bit like a run-of-the-mill kind of story. Again, I can't help but think that more could have been done with the plot. As it was, there was little to shout about.This isn't a great film, but it's not half bad either. Angelica Lee is one of the great contemporary talents and I really believe she will go far. Even in this early film in her career, she really shone above the rest. One for Angelica fans.

sarastro7 With IMDb describing Princess D as a sci-fi movie, and offering a rating of (then) above 7, I thought I could allow myself to expect a good movie. And while I'll admit that it was Angelica Lee that attracted me to the movie (and she indeed looks stunning), the movie as a whole was something of a disappointment. It doesn't seem to take place in the future; it's about a game designer who's basing a computer game character on a real girl he becomes infatuated with.But it isn't a sci-fi movie. In fact, the whole computer game aspect grows thinner and thinner, as the movie focuses more and more on the miserable life situation of the girl, who deals drugs in order to pay off her brother's debt to a gangster. The characterization tends to be superficial, some key scenes seem to be entirely missing, and... it's just not a particularly good movie - in my opinion.But Angelica Lee *is* great to look at...5 out of 10.

NIXFLIX-DOT-COM Angelica Lee lifts an otherwise pedestrian story into one deserving of attention. Lee delivers a powerful performance, made even the more extraordinary because she's relatively new to this whole acting thing. Even so, she's the only reason to watch this movie, giving it heart and soul and just about anything else you'll need to fall in love with this film.Lee's 2002 film is THE EYE, another great choice.8 out of 10.

mweston The film opens with a cool CGI cartoon of a fly, and then we see the fly in the real world. We meet Joker, a video game designer. In a bar he meets Ling, a bartender with an attitude, and she saves him in a impressive Hong Kong-style fight scene in the alley. My expectations were high.Joker uses Ling as his inspiration for a video game character, but then the film ground to a halt for me. It became a love story, which would have been fine, except it seemed to move *very* slowly, with many details that seemed completely irrelevant. Granted, I was sleepy, but I started the film very interested and it lost me.Seen on 11/5/2002 at the 2002 Hawaii International Film Festival.