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Review
by Kozo: |
Prepare yourself. Wong Jing corrals
Stephen Chow into appearing in this egregiously overbearing
comedy that occasionally entertains but not before annoying
the hell out of you first. Chow plays one of his stock
characters, a rich egotist who spends his days fooling others
and generally acting stuck-up and snotty. At school, he teases
nerdy classmate Gigi Leung and her father Tsui Kam-Kong, who
also happens to be a wacky inventor. Stephen takes out his
neighbor's girl (Pauline Suen), and the two go to a local
bar and engage in a jarring Pulp Fiction parody. Afterwards,
her guy (Cheng Cho) comes after him and screws with him.
Stephen is saved by scientist Tsui,
who rebuilds him as a shape shifting superhero, except he
can only turn into household products (?). Undaunted, Stephen
returns to his life by becoming a school teacher and charming
the now-pretty Gigi Leung. And, events occur which give Stephen
opportunities to turn into various household gadgets, i.e.
a rice cooker, a toilet, etc. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?
Truthfully, there are a few good
gags along the way, but the whole exercise is tainted by mean-spirited
and tasteless gags, shoddy direction, and a story that has
no real rhyme or reason. Other than the standard plot devices,
it seems as if the script was written to satisfy the special
effects, which are pretty bad (though Hong Kong is rather
new to this sort of thing). And, many jokes are culturally
specific meaning the average non-HK resident simply won't
get them. (Kozo
1996) |
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