Bath Buddy (China 2020) - Movie Review

Welcome to our short review of the Chinese comedy film Bath Buddy

What’s this movie about?

Loosely inspired by a Korean webtoon, a struggling bath house owner, drowning in debt from bad decisions, takes on a job to give a second-generation rich man a body scrub. But things go wrong, and he doesn’t get paid.

After a wingsuit accident causes the man to lose his memory, the bath house owner enacts plan to get revenge, claiming that he is his younger brother who works at the bath house alongside him.

He then trains him to be a top-class scrubber, until his memory comes back and he realises he has been lied to. But with the title of Bath Champion on the line at the 26^th Bath Expo awards, can they reconcile their differences in time?

Is it Worth Watching?

While watching this, I was strangely reminded of both Happy Gilmore and Dodgeball, especially the ending with the commentators. And that’s not a bad thing, that was a great comedy film, and this is pretty good too.

There’s nothing new here, it’s a very comfortable movie and it’s a story line you’ve seen many times before, you’ve just never seen it set in a bathhouse!

Shan Qiao and Yucheng Peng have some excellent chemistry on screen as the long suffering bath house owner and the young rich man who dreams of running a hot springs spa resort town, with their worlds colliding in the usual rich vs poor movie trope.

Strangely, for a movie of this type, there is a lot of CGI, and it’s mostly pretty good. But to be expected now from a modern movie where more than what you’d expect is computer generated.

This is an entertaining film, that doesn’t bring anything new, but its still an enjoyable watch.

I give it a thumbs up.