“Down with Seoul Raiders!” was the battle cry from Jack Neo, local film extraordinaire, during the “I DO I DO” Press conference’s Good Luck Yu Sheng Session at Noble House on 1st February 2005 with his film production cast: Adrian Pang, Sharon Au, Allan Wu and crewmembers.

This year, Jack Neo’s J team has came up with a film about the romance scene in Singapore. After touching on the local financial pressure, pressure that kids feel and even the all out comedy Liang Po Po, Director Jack Neo felt it’s time to move on to another genre and this time, romance is in the air.

From the trailer that was provided to the media, although the film seems to be a reflection of the Singapore society again, the storyline should be a fairly simple and routine one. Ugly underachiever falls for pretty successful girl who has eyes only for one handsome hunk, resulting in that age-old sage of ‘All that glitter is not gold’.

Joining J Team is funny man, Adrian Pang. Jack Neo mentioned that he had always wanted to work with Adrian ever since the director saw his performance in “Forever Fever”. However the gap between Mediaworks and Mediacorp had not allowed the partnership to formulate until late last year. In “I DO I DO”, Adrian portrayed a truck driver who is trying to improve himself to win the heart of Sharon Au. Not an easy task as Adrian who is fluent in English and terrible in Mandarin had to do a 180 degree turnaround to perform as an uneducated man trying to learn English from a pretty 16-year-old Caucasian teacher.

When the topic switches to the kissing scenes in the film, director Jack Neo quickly points out that it was hard work as Sharon’s kissing on camera is no better than a dead fish. He even started querying if she knows how to kiss in real life which Sharon assures everyone present that she is a way better kisser when the camera is not on her.

Sharon then moved the focus back to the film itself and provided the reason why she participated in this film. She felt that Singaporean girls, especially from what she had noticed from her friends, have rather unrealistic views and high expectations about their potential spouses. Therefore she would like to use her character in this film to warn those eligible successful career women, who are not doing all that well in their love life, to lower their unreasonably high expectations on their other half.

Sounds pretty much in tune with the government’s concern with fewer marriages and the declining birthrates in Singapore. However when Sharon was queried on her martial status, she replied she was too busy with work to contemplate marriage at this point of time.

Some of the cast ‘complained’ that during filming, not only did they have to perform under a tight time constraint; they often found the scripts changed only when they arrived at the filming set. Marcus Chin commented that after a while, they realized that they don’t even need a script and all of them simply wait for instructions from Jack Neo at the filming set. He even compared Jack Neo’s directing technique to the likes of world-renowned director Wong Kar Wai who never used a script for his films.

Likewise Both “I DO I Do” and Wong Kar Wai’s award winning “Chung King Express” films were filmed in a very short span of time.

Inspired by the success of Kung Fu Hustle and impressed by the computer-generated graphics, Jack Neo made his computer graphics debut with I DO I DO. However the budget of special effects are nowhere near Kung Fu Hustle, so he enlisted help from a Malaysia special effects team to create these CGI special effects to enhance the viewing pleasures and hopefully draw heartier laughter from the audience.

So come 8 February, the audience has the power to vote for which film to stay on the top of the Box Office for the Chinese New Year Film of 2005. Nope you can’t SMS or call to vote, and Yes, you can only buy a ticket to support the film. Would it be Hong Kong’s “Seoul Raiders”, our local production “I DO I DO”?

It’s all up to you now!

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Story: Richard Lim Jr | Photos: Lokman B.S. | Layout: Lokman B.S.