Movie Review: Delete My Love/Delete愛人

Delete My Love/Delete愛人 is the latest film from Patrick Kong, who is generally not one of my favorite directors.

The movie stars Wong Cho Lam, whose usual onscreen persona is one of the most irritating things in the movies I see.

When I sat down in the cinema to watch Delete My Love/Delete愛人, I was ready to see just how badly the director of The Best Plan is No Plan and an actor I usually describe as a flaming metrosexual could wind me up.

I watch movies so you don’t have to, right?

As the movie opened, it presented a bunch of jokes that I didn’t laugh at.  But neither did anyone else in the cinema, and that really surprised me.

It actually concerned me.

I hate to be serious, But it is clear that I need to be in this review. I think I have a brain tumor. Or at least an aneurysm.

I already have brain damage, but that’s a story for another time.

There’s obviously something very wrong with me.

Because I didn’t hate Delete My Love/Delete愛人. I actually… liked it.

What’s wrong with me?!?!?!?

Maybe it was the cast.

What always irks me about Wong Cho Lam is that he, like a lot of other local actors, seems to always play the same role in movies.

It is apparently a continuation of his usual character that he plays on television. I can’t be sure because I don’t watch TVB.

I don’t have much self-respect… but I have some.

But never mind that.

People in Hong Kong apparently love Wong Cho Lam’s schtick. I just don’t happen to be one of them.

There’s plenty of it on display in Delete My Love/Delete愛人.

But for a change, he also acts differently.

He acts serious.

And it’s so novel that it’s almost compelling.

Wong plays So Po Wing, a small potato in a company run by Michael Hui, and  he is not the boss you want to have.

Bullied and insulted by virtually every one of his colleagues, who call him ‘So Boring,’ he wishes his life was better.

Don’t we all?

At times it was hard to focus on him because he’s dressed in outfits that look like they were picked out by a color-blind mule deer.

I don’t know either. It just appeared in my head.

Ivana Wong is also very good in this movie.  She was convincing as Wong Cho Lam’s dedicated, patient girlfriend.

It helps, I guess, that she is cuter than three kittens.

I don’t mean attractively cute, I just mean… cute cute.

Keung Ho Man has a small role, but as usual he makes his presence known.

But the undisputed heavyweight champion of small roles with big impact is, of course, Michael Wong.

His role as the boss is a marvelous example of scene-cheing, overacted fun.

You can’t get mad at Michael Wong.

Yet another small role with big presence is played by Daniella Wang Li Dan, whom some of you may recognize from an earlier film.

No? You don’t?  Okay, how about this?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Lo Hoi Pang naturally appears.

If Lo Hoi Pang ever fails an audition and doesn’t appear in a local film… the world will end.

Shiga Lin has a small role as a stutterer.

Or is it stammerer?

Whatever it is, the important thing about her role is this:

She did not wear this outfit in the movie.

Dammit.

Don’t get me wrong, Delete My Love/Delete愛人 is no contender for best picture.

I never said this was a good movie. I just said it isn’t a bad movie.

But to be fair, I was entertained. 

Even better, I was mostly entertained in the way the movie intended.

There was one moment where I laughed at the film.

Delete My Love/Delete愛人 may have made cinematic history by being the first film to have a scene with a flashback, and the flashback is about a detail in the scene that’s going on.

Who knows? Maybe Patrick Kong did it as an ironic joke about the flashback tendencies of local cinema.

Or maybe not.

One of the best moments of the movie for me was a subtitle that had me laughing out loud: “This douche is your son-in-law?”

So I actually enjoyed  Delete My Love/Delete愛人. It was silly, but it was silly fun.

Besides, how can you get mad at a movie with a Bat Leung Gum cameo?