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Review
by Kozo: |
A
group of younger Hong Kong faces gets their big screen
shot in Moments of Love. The story of five
crisscrossing youth romances, Moments of Love
gets immediate cred for good use of its overcrowded
Mongkok location, plus a couple of bonus points for
the occasional telling moment. It also gets a quick
dismissal for an abundance of useless moments, annoying
storytelling devices, and sometimes uninteresting
acting. But hey, at least they tried.
TVB star Ron Ng leads
the cast as a marketing peon who engages in a fiery
professional/personal spat with colleague Race Wong.
Meanwhile, a high school student V (Vivian Yeo) begins
to pay too-close attention to her young teacher (Wilfred
Lau). Sassy waitress Yuki (Yan Ng) begins getting
mysterious text messages, and she thinks they're from
a cute guy (Don Li) who's been giving her the eye.
Sadly, she spends more time running into geeky guy
Ronald (Hins Cheung), who wears pronounced braces
and sings karaoke pretty damn well. Sing (Steven Cheung)
discovers a suicide note, and looks for the writer
to placate his girlfriend Fong (Natalie Tong), but
his behavior starts to get a little loony. Finally,
loutish Doby (Deep Ng) has a nasty breakup with his
girlfriend Wiz (Macy Chan), which involves him shouting
at her despicably. Regretting his outburst, he opens
a business where customers pay to express their angry,
and sometimes violent feelings towards him.
As youth romances go,
Moments of Love has its positives. The occasional
rumination on love and youth manages to work, especially
in light of the film's disjointed narrative. Some
of the actors are decent, if not noteworthy, and director
Billy Chung uses his Mongkok location exceptionally
well. Though the stories themselves sometimes lack
credibility, they do seem to take on more life when
set against the teeming masses on the Mongkok streets.
Unfortunately, the film also possesses its share of
missteps, including mistimed attempts at comedy, sometimes
unearned sentiment, and a performance from Deep Ng
that should have been reined in via riot police, or
at least a good straitjacket. Furthermore, the film
is far too cursory (Five stories in only 90 minutes?)
to truly affect. There are some moments in Moments
of Love, but ultimately they're rather mild ones.
(Kozo 2006) |
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