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Review
by Kozo: |
Off-the-wall satire from those Milkyway fellas proves to
be their most flawed work since Where a Good Man Goes.
White-hot Cecilia Cheung is Yan, a neophyte doctor working
at Ho Ka-Kui General Hospital. As you’d expect, she’s one
of the idealistic types, hoping to make a difference and help
people. Sadly, that’s not the case at this hospital, where
the higher ups (a strange group of seven guys who hide in
the dark) make the budget their primary concern. Their instruction:
keep everything cheap, even if it means letting people die.
As if that weren’t dark enough, the
doctors and nurses are lazy, self-important, and care nothing
for the patients. They’re more interested in lunch breaks
and shift changes than anything else. One of them is Jim (Jordan
Chan), who actually operated on Yan when she was only a fourteen
year-old. Back then Jim and his co-hort Joe (Ekin Cheng) worked
extra hard to hide Yan’s appendectomy scar so she could wear
a bikini someday.
As if that weren’t silly-sounding enough,
Yan was so touched by their zeal and enthusiasm that she became
a doctor AND made a promise to herself to marry one of the
two someday. Meanwhile, Jim decides to rededicate himself
but he can’t do it alone. He and Yan turn to Joe, who’s now
an auto-mechanic who works feverishly on cars in an auto body
shop that looks suspiciously like an emergency room. He even
has his assistants wiping sweat from his brow when he’s hunched
over an engine. And that’s just the beginning of the silliness,
as we witness toilet cleaning, quintuplets, chainsaws, talking
cars, rainstorms, lovestruck beggars, and multiple attacks
by lightning - all in the name of medical satire.
This hospital comedy is incredibly frenetic
even by HK standards. Jokes and body parts fly fast and furious,
and To and Wai never stop to explore the maudlin - even with
life and death surrounding everything. Given that, the movie
can be seen as a total waste, but To and Wai manage to inject
a healthy dose of creativity into the proceedings. Unfortunately,
that creativity does little more than throw as many jokes
out there that they possibly can. The result, while not as
trying or idiotic as a Wong Jing feature, comes off as uneven
and muddled. The film certainly is funny, but no payoff truly
exists.
On the plus side, the leads turn
in fun performances, especially usual co-conspirators Ekin
Cheng and Jordan Chan, who finally manage to team up on a
movie that doesn’t involve triads or hi-tech spy espionage.
This may not be a movie for the people expecting more Milkywaycrime films, but it has creativity, cinematic flair, and
effective star turns, which isn't bad for a Hong Kong movie.
It's just below the mark for a Milkyway film.
(Kozo 2000) |
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