Top Chinese director Xiaogang's diverting comedy shows how the Western evil of advertising has shattered the bamboo curtain.

Film director Don Tyler (Sutherland), replete with pony-tail and dodgy satin waistcoat, has suffered an artistic block while filming a remake of The Last Emperor in Beijing.

In fact, the inspirational obstacle he's up against has the proportions of the Great Wall itself and he cancels all filming.

His melancholia tips him into a coma when studio boss Tony (Mazursky) flies in from LA to inform his star director he's been replaced by an "MTV kid".

Shortly before he lost consciousness, Tyler asked down-on-his-luck cameraman YoYo (You) to give him a "comedy funeral" to prepare him for Buddhist reincarnation.

But when the costs of the event spin wildly out of control, YoYo manages to hold it all together by selling advertising space for the televised service around the world.

This is where the movie really works as comedy with Chinese entrepreneurs making up in the tastelessness stakes for the time lost under the Communist rulers.

All available space on Tyler's hearse is bought up by sponsors and Bad Beer becomes the "official drink of the funeral".

In the funniest sequence, a top Chinese actor blubs uncontrollably over a shop dummy representing Tyler while extolling the virtues of a calcium supplement.

The only problem is Tyler has recovered consciousness... and if the news leaks out, the whole lucrative deal is off.

An uneven satire, this only really works when the marketing men are in full swing and, after the joke has been cracked, things fall rather flat.

Still, it's worth watching for a mineral water mafia leader requesting a "happier tempo" for the funeral dirge.

Tim Evans