Writer: Siti Munawirah Mustaffa

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Watch this if you liked: “One Leg Kicking” and “Phua Chu Kang The Movie”

Loosely inspired by Dr. Cai Mingjie's biography, "Diary Of A Taxi Driver: True Stories From Singapore's Most Educated Cabdriver", Singaporean filmmaker Kelvin Sng brings out "Taxi! Taxi!"; a film that centres on Professor Chua (Gurmit Singh), a microbiology researcher cum PhD holder who turns to taxi driving after losing his job.

Those familiar with Gurmit's Phua Chu Kang's antics, expect to see a different side of him altogether as he plays the serious, career focused and ever so uptight Professor Chua. Meanwhile, Mark Lee stars as a veteran carefree taxi driver named Ah Tau whose friendship with Professor Chua did not begin with a friendly encounter as they are both oftentimes caught in awkward moments, eventually leading to a series of quarrels.

While its humour will not cause you to have a series of uncontrollable laughter, the characters' lines are fairly decent and the film still manages to pull off a little bit of funny acts here and there which depict the daily lives of Singaporean cab drivers as well as the materialistic society's perceptions towards the profession and their social prejudice.

What the reviewer is mostly curious about is why Gurmit's Professor Chua happens to be the only one conversing in English (or Singlish) throughout the entire film whereas the rest of the casts just speak Mandarin. Whatever the director's intention may be, which could be to portray Chua as the educated PhD holder, it seems implausible and unrealistic for someone to use English, only to be answered with a different language by everyone around him. On another downside, a number of casts seem to overact in the film, making it look like a stage play. Perhaps that is what Malaysian and Singaporean audiences would actually enjoy? God knows.

Even so, the film's saviour would be the strong connection between Gurmit's Professor Chua and Mark's Ah Tau that represents invaluable friendship despite all the striking differences in terms of background and personalities. It is good to see the duo on the same set again after their last performance together on "One Leg Kicking" which was released more than a decade ago.

While it's far from being in par with Robert De Niro's "Taxi Driver", Kelvin Sng's "Taxi! Taxi!" is a decent enough comedy, despite being his first full-length feature film and could be enjoyed in a mass family gathering.

Cinema Online, 31 January 2013