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Just Follow Law [Movie Analysis]

Just Follow Law is a satire of social issues present in Singapore. The issues highlighted is the Singapore work culture, the difference of lifestyle between social classes and gender stereotypes. The movie shows this through the two main protagonist, Tanya Chew and Lim Teng Zui, the director of the promotion department in the company who is financially stable and the technician who is financially instable respectively. Due to their polarizing personalities and lives, it is quite eye opening to both of them when they switched bodies after a car accident. Lim initially took advantage of his newfound wealth and went on a splurge by buying things he could not afford initially for his daughter. This is the exact opposite as to when Tanya was shown to shower her elderly mother with gifts and a lot of financial support, she gives very little time or care to what her mother actually wants, which is just quality time with her daughter. Despite being smart, she lacks the empath or the capacity to see how her actions affect others. This is then compared to how Lim may not be smart but his ability to understand people and empathise with them makes him able to create more meaningful relationships with people. The movie also highlights how Singapore's education system has instilled the notion of strictly following rules, this is shown when Lim's daughter refuses to jaywalk and Tanya refuses to do anything that requires her to defy the set rules.  By the end of the film both Tanya and Lim finally saw eye to eye and started to fall in love as they balance each other out.

Work Culture

The movie displays how employees may be unskilled and is unmotivated to do their job properly. This is shown when the work of getting rid of excess items from the office kept being passed around until it ended up with Lim Teng Zui. His solution was to just board it up at the car park and used duct tape to hold it all up together. It was a lazy solution resulting in negative press due to what happened with the Chinese official falling down when he leaned on it. This is scenario brings to light the real problem of Singaporean employees lacking in skill training.

According to a survey held in 2019, majority of Singaporeans stated that their biggest obstacle to take up learning was the lack of time and accessibility. The soft skills that Singapore employees perceive to be important for career progression being analytical thinking, active learning and creativity. Singapore needs to up their game in educating their employees. Everyone has the potential to do well in the company if given the opportunity to, hence Singapore companies should have the incentive to provide learning programmes for them for free.

Another problem shown in the scenario is how unmotivated the employees were to actually get the job done, no one actually double check to see if the work done by Lim Teng Zui was good. This may be due to how they feel towards their higher ups. They have this notion of thinking they are being looked down upon and those above distributes the orders without care for the ones working under them. This is also called 'depersonalisation of public officials.' This leads to a low motivation in employees as they feel detached and see their job as repetitive.

Social Classes

Lim Teng Zui and Tanya Chew come from different social classes, hence are equipped with differing set of priorities and attitude. For example, their view in family and close interpersonal relationships.

Tanya Chew is shown to be well off and lives in a rich apartment with her elderly mother. She spends her money lavishly on herself and showers her mother financially. However, she shows little care in actually giving her what she wants – quality time with her daughter. Tanya prioritizes her career over her mother or starting a family of her own as she has stated that she hates children. This is also a reflection of Singapore's norm of children taking care of parents' needs is changing. Compared to the past where women are usually stay-at-home wives and are expected to take up the caregiving role, but now, more women holds a job and has little to no time to care for their families, hence why they tend to not create families and prioritise their careers instead.

Tanya's education is higher compared to Lim Teng Zui, she speaks English fluently and very head strong. However, she can't speak her native tongue as well. Tanya is also shown to be law abiding and follows the rules no matter how tedious it may be. She is the stereotyped government elite.

On the other hand, Lim Teng Zui is depicted to be in financially needy and lives together with his two friends. He dotes on his daughter and wishes to give her everything she needs. An example for this is when he asked for help from his friends to help him afford his daughter's piano lessons. He cares little of his job as displayed by his poor work ethics but cares a lot more about his friends and especially his daughter. He prioritizes family over career. He makes it a point to break rules.  This is shown in the scene where he jaywalked across the street and asked his daughter to the same. But she refused as her school has taught her that they must only walk when the traffic light shines a green walking man. This is however brought back up again but in reverse. The traffic light broke, and she was puzzled. One thing leads to another and she got into a car accident.

This shines light on the education system does not have room to nourish children's' creativity and ability to pass their own judgement. Children can solve any questions no matter the difficulty in exams only if they have encountered it before, memorised keywords, certain structures to score high. However, it is virtually impossible for them to develop an original solution for a new problem in a time-constrained exam setting.

Lim Teng Zui is portrayed to be uneducated and speaks fluent Singlish, however his English needs improvement. Singlish is shown to be another characteristic of a lazy good for nothing person in Singapore. The government tried to suppress this as they feared this language might create a negative image of Singapore as foreigners may not be able to decipher its meaning and gives the appearance of Singaporeans not being able to speak fluent English.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Just Follow Law shows Singapore as a society's mindset in a more dramatic fashion. It plays with the scenarios of what happens if we all just follow law as its written as well as what happens if we do not follow law as Lim Teng Zui lived by. The answer is simpler than one may think, people should be able to make their own judgement based on different circumstances. Life is not like in school examinations where the answers are always black and white. Sometimes you need to do the right thing and it may not always be deemed right by the general census.