B.T.S. (Better Than Sex) (2002)

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

the movie is about different people and their unrelated stories, although they all cross paths eventually. the movie is set in Taipei, Taiwan. one group is a Japanese TV show looking for teenage delinquents in Taipei. another group is a boy with an obsession with porn and the high school girl who has a crush on him. the last and funniest group is a gang of three wannabe gangsters who run around on tricked out scooters. there's Taiwanese rap (very good), unrequited love, wickedness and other hi jinks. the movie is very funny. all the actors act very well and the story is believable overall. the director mocks youth and it's angst and yet realizes it is very true for young people in such a fast paced world. true love is one of the motto's and wickedness is punished in the end. overall, this is a feel good movie, about enjoying life and it's pleasures and being good people. i found this glimpse of Taiwan fascinating and hope they make more movies like this. go see it, it's good!

A truly off the wall comedy about a 17 year old Chinese guy who because of his very large penis as a 10 year old boy decides to take an obsessive interest in porn (it doesn't appear hard core and he starts with comics). He is befriended by a book store owner who gets him the girlie magazines (mostly naked beautiful Asian girls)that leads him to believe that he doesn't need a girlfriend. There is a motorcycle gang of three teenagers who find a "magic" samurai sword that make them orgasm when they hold it (it seems more like they're urinating but maybe this is a Chinese thing). The angry motorcycle cop who is after the gang drives into the bookstore and runs over the owner killing him. The guy who is porn obsessed inherits a key to a lock to a secret apartment that a woman lives in that is the wife of the boss of two Japanese girls who are doing a TV show on Taiwan teenage delinquency. The girls "catch" (they put what looks like tennis racquets with nets on them over the girls heads) two "punk" girls one of whom had a crush on the porn obsessed guy when they were in school together. She caught him looking at porn and saying he didn't need a girlfriend which broke her heart and she went "punk" and armed herself with a taser and goes on a robbery spree to get money to go to Japan to see a "boy" band the Tomato Brothers (2 guys with plastic tomato heads). If all this sounds weirdly interesting to you then find this movie and watch it. While there is no actual sex there is a lot of talk about it and some mild nudity. In the end the guy discovers that true love is better then sex and holding your true love's hand makes you either pee like crazy or orgasm which ever Chinese people see it as. There's even some Chinese "rapping" by a Hotdog rapper. Well worth finding and watching.

If you have seen enough Taiwanese films you will be pleasantly surprised by this one. This is an attempt by the director to save Taiwan's film industry from its overly artsy and unprofitable film environment. Taiwan's film industry have been on a downward slope ever since Taiwan's new wave of directors started making political and avant-garde films. Even though those films won awards at major festivals it fails to bring in profits in its native country. However, this film is an attempt to break free from that type of environment and an attempt to gain audiences interests once more. It was quite an success in Taiwan which actually brought in box office numbers. The film did not make any profit, but it did earn enough to balance out its film budget, which was a first ever since the Taiwan's new wave of films. The director of photography of this film is very well known among the Asian commercial industry. Thus, enabling this film to have a totally different look from past Taiwanese films. The film was well shot and did a good job on color correction making the quality more Hollywood like. The only downside about this film was that I thought the characters wasn't very well developed. The separate stories were also connected in a way which looked overly pretentious. However, the wacky story lines and weird plots makes up for that imperfection.

Looking at the relatively low rating this thing has on IMDb I'm guessing that a lot of the voters confused this Taiwanese movie with the American movie of the same name (especially since this movie is next to impossible to track down to view). At any rate, after going a little bit of an Asian movie spree earlier this year and being somewhat disappointed, I was pleasantly surprised after watching Better Than Sex as it is definitely one of the funniest and simultaneously heartwarming movies I've ever seen. However, it is also pretty disgusting at times and voices viewpoints that more conservative viewers would probably not find all that pleasant. That said, it was roaringly funny to the audience I saw it with and I'd venture that even the more conservative amongst us would still find it quite funny even if they won't admit it to others =) Since this is a non-spoiler review I can't really say anything more, but it's definitely worth a watch. This movie is pretty hard to find though, even in New York City's Chinatown (my friend tried) but it's definitely worth the effort of tracking it down.Find it and watch it!