Probably the most dubious advertisement for Thai tourism since The Hangover Part II, director Mangesh Hadawale’s comedy drama Thai Massage paints a rather confused picture of the popular travel destination. And this non-committal approach appears to have rubbed off on the film as well.
On one hand, Hadawale suggests that everything you’ve heard about Thailand being a hotbed of vice and degeneracy is accurate, and on the other, he behaves like someone who has just been granted a significant tax break by the Thai government. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, one would imagine. And while there isn’t anything necessarily wrong with how Thailand is portrayed in the film — if anything, the country seems to be comfortable with its slightly saucy image — it’s more disorientating when the movie itself cannot decide what version of itself it wants to present to the world.
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