SINGAPORE - Fact: This movie outdid Man Of Steel in China’s box office.

Tiny Times tells a tale of four university students — Lin Xiao (Yang Mi), Lily (Amber Kuo), Nan Xiang (Bea Hayden) and Ruby (Sie Yi Lin) — who have have stuck together since high school. Yes, despite their disparate lives and varied backgrounds. These fashionably-decked university students balance their studies while running fashion festivals or, for lead character Lin Xiao, working at an influential fashion magazine. The fashion magazine is staffed with well-heeled, beautiful people who partake in rooftop parties and is headed by its stoic editor, Gong Ming (Rhydian Vaughn).

Consider this China’s version of Sex And The City meets Gossip Girl with a dash of The Devil Wears Prada. The men, too, are idealised and glamorised, each introduced with a slow motion pan coupled with lens flare and soft filters. And for viewers who need more than wry, secretive smirks or a wink at the camera - congratulations - you get the obligatory shower scene.

With all the good looks on show, this movie borders on the surreal, so it’s a good thing that there’s the presence of comic-relief Ruby as the ungainly plain Jane. Many of the movie’s funniest moments revolve around her and her lack of self-awareness, adding levity when the movie threatens to fall into soppy melodrama. Still, the fun gets drained when characters start waxing lyrical about the meaning of life throughout the film.

Still, credit goes to writer/director Guo Jingming for doing enough with the source material - Guo also wrote the series of bestselling novels the movie is based on - to keep things going. He manages to use some broad strokes to bring out the emotion of having old friends, and the nostalgia of having grown up together even as our lives head in different paths.

As a first-time director, Guo and his cinematographer have managed to film what can also work as a Shanghai travelogue filled with beautiful sights and people. But it’s a pity that he gets too indulgent in using soft focus and the use of multiple long over-choreographed single-cut shots. Despite its celebration of crass commercialism; its over-indulgent direction; some truncated storytelling that might have worked better as a serial; spots of horrible acting and countless vapid platitudes masquerading as philosophy; the movie’s humour and the earnest cast do help ensure that the movie ends up more than bearable.

Its charm lies in how it manages to paint a picture of an idealised version of your lives. Note: Tiny Times 2 just opened there, so it won’t be long until the further adventures of these ladies reach our shores and continues what’s best described as a guilty pleasure.

(PG, 116 min)