Back in the days when everything Stephen Chow touched turned to slapstick-comedy gold, and even serious fare from auteur Wong Kar-Wai received global praise, Hong Kong cinema was certainly in its heyday. So when a small, nondescript comedy like Mr & Mrs Gambler rolls along in 2012 - and happens to spoof these masters of film - you know that we are in desperate times.
"No wonder Hong Kong movies are so crappy now," a character mutters unabashedly halfway through the film. After sitting through this movie in its entirety, one can't help but see why.
Sweet-looking singer/actress Fiona Sit stars opposite HK B-list prince Chapman To as a pair of gamblers who finds romance after a 'near-death' situation, their relationship fuelled by both of their pathological gambling ways. After a shot-gun marriage (complete with a horserace-betting themed exchanging of vows), To's character, Manfred, finds moderate success as a Chinese star in Hollywood, while Sit's Flora, being bored as a housewife, ends up as a supervisor of a casino conglomerate in Macau. Being constantly away from each other, the couple ends up on the brink of divorce and finds themselves prospective love interests, both fighting for sole custody of their only daughter.
While the themes of family responsibility and highlighting society's ill of gambling addicts are touched on in the film, director Wong Jing of God of Gamblers series fame seems to view them as little 'moral fillers', and decides to dedicate the rest of the movie to lame jokes. Thus, the audience is treated to scene upon scene of lowbrow sexual humour that is as unfunny as they are degrading, with crude references to human body parts. A-list veterans like Law Kar-Ying and Mimi Chu are also wasted in caricatured supporting roles as parents of the couple, in spite of stealing every scene they are in.
Although spoofs of Wong Kar-Wai's severely overdue Ip Man epic, The Grandmasters, might trigger a few laughs, and an exaggerated argument in broken English over a dinner table does showcase the leads' comedic chemistry, it is a pity to say that these moments are few and far between. Besides, being a gambling comedy per se, highly anticipated scenes of outrageous mahjong or card games are almost non-existent, leaving hardcore HK-comedy fans with nothing to take home with.
A point to note that although the marketing poster of the movie (and of course, its title) is a dead ringer to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), the similarities, however, end there. While the Hollywood film was a satisfying romp of inane fight sequences, this Hong Kong film is an almost pointless mess on its own, adding no value whatsoever to a flailing industry where Taiwan and South Korea are quickly taking over.
On a side note, and for everyone's sake, let's hope Wong's The Grandmasters doesn't really appear in the year 2046. |