CNY Movie Review: I Love Hong Kong 2012/2012我愛HK 喜上加囍

2012. It’s a new year, and that means one thing: Chinese New Year (CNY) movies! While some films are released around Chinese New Year, other films are literally made for the holiday. Most often, the traditional New Year films are very family-based, frivolous, and light hearted (at least by the conclusion of the film).

They’re kind of like an old Christmas sweater that someone in your family has worn at the holidays for about 30 years. It’s comfortable, nostalgia-inducing, a symbol of family and holiday, and you wouldn’t be caught dead in it any other time of the year.

New Year films are farcical in the most thorough and yet most endearing way. They’re supposed to be farcical, and given that license, they run screaming with it. They run with scissors.

New Year films don’t flirt with silliness and stupidity. They shower them with gifts, whisper fawning supplications in their ear and slip K-jai into their drinks, then bring them to Kowloon Tong for a sweaty 3-way. That is filmed.

And you know what? I’m okay with that. As frothed up as I often get over the perceived stupidity of films, it never bothers me during New Year because I know that New Year films are supposed to be stupid.

Really stupid.

I knew that   The Great Magician/大魔術師 was released during the New Year holiday, but I didn’t know it was a New Year film. Had I known that, I would have enjoyed its descent into farce much more than I did.

In the last few years, there have come to be two New Year film franchises, I Love Hong Kong and All’s Well Ends Well, brought to us by TVB/Shaw Brothers and Raymond Wong respectively.

They use the same title every year, changing only the year.

Branding or laziness? Hard to tell sometimes.

But it doesn’t really matter.

I love CNY movies because they are guaranteed to be stupid and I don’t have to worry about it.

Kind of like Wong Jing movies.

I Love Hong Kong 2012/2012我愛HK 喜上加囍 does not disappoint in that department. But it’s okay, and it’s actually pretty fun.

For me, the best thing was to be able to see Stanley Fung Shui Fan and   Siu Yam Yam on the big screen.

Siu Yam Yam tries to show Stanley Fung some of her other plastic surgery. Note his response.

Stanley is often in the series, but it is simply a nice thing to see him anyway.

The same goes for Anita Yuen, who was in the series previously though not in this installment.

Too often, older HK stars get sent packing, right around the time they actually become good actors!

The story revolves, as it usually does, around a family in crisis.

And Eric Tsang Chi Wai.

This photo makes me nervous.

There is romance, the testing of filial bonds, and lazy family members in afro wigs.

What, you thought I was joking?

Romance is in the air in  I Love Hong Kong 2012/2012我愛HK 喜上加囍, and its as thick as winter smog.

6-Wing and Vivian Zhang are two people brought together by fate.

Well, by the scrīpt, actually.

He’s thinking about baseball. I would be too.

Will they find true love?

Is love truly blind?

She’d have to be, wouldn’t she?

Of course love is blind.

But even Ray Charles knew the difference between a $1 and $10 bill.

Love isn’t free.

Especially at 2:00AM in Mong Kok.  From what I’ve read.

Love is blind, justice is blind, but finance has 20/20 vision.

6-Wing is broke. How will he ever manage to woo Vivian Zhang?

By living virtuously and taking a stand against property-owner hegemony!

Because that makes chicks hot. 

Let’s face it; plausibility is not a necessary ingredient in CNY films. To that end: 

Denise Ho Wan Si and Bosco Wong Chung Chak play the odd couple, since both of them appear to be playing for the other team.

“Of course I can wear white at the wedding, silly!”

I enjoyed this subplot, because even though it is a grudging allowance for alternative lifestyles, it is still light years ahead of many contemporary depictions. It was also oddly refreshing to note the tacit acceptance of premarital sex between these two characters, another refreshing change.

Of course, my insipid fascination with tomboys in general and one of Hong Kong’s ‘flagship lesbians’ in particular certainly helped.

“I am jealous of Bosco Wong” is not a phrase I’ve ever thought I’d hear myself say.

Naturally (?), in true CNY spirit, these two misfits ( ???) manage to find a relationship space well within accepted Chinese expectations.

Hong Kongers accept gay people. As long as they get married and have children. That’s fair, right?

My favorite pleasant surprise in **I Love Hong Kong 2012/2012我愛HK 喜上加囍  is the return of Natalie ‘Diesel’ Meng Yao, former Wong Jing ‘It Girl’ (read: bed partner).**

If I say her presence looms over others in the film, it’s only because she’s so f@#$ing big:

這是一個大的母狗.

Like all good CNY films, **I Love Hong Kong 2012/2012我愛HK 喜上加囍  is quick, silly, and essentially forgettable.**

But it is also a quintessential part of Hong Kong Chinese New Year culture, and I sincerely enjoy seeing these films in the theatre with a local audience, who always seem to thoroughly (and verbally) enjoy themselves. 

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It’s something I look forward to every year and always one of the highlights of my CNY festivities.

Seeing Eric Tsang’s crotch thankfully is not.

It’s also the only time of the year that the Dynasty is more than 6% full.  Money laundering is never easier than during Chinese New Year!!!