Shanghai Surprise

A water-coloured, watered-down romantic comedy set in Shanghai in 1937, with the helplessly miscast Madonna (would you buy a used Bible from this woman?) trading on her ironic stage name to play an American missionary. She, with the aid of Penn's gaudy tie salesman, is desperately seeking 'Faraday's Flowers', a hidden opium stockpile which will help relieve the suffering of soldiers wounded in the war with Japan. The action is simply an implausible chain of events sensationally strung together, a Saturday morning serial formula which worked for Raiders of the Lost Ark; here, the heavy-handed manipulation of genre ingredients simply results in vulgar, often embarrassing, kitsch.