SYNOPSIS:
Air
stewardess Huang Jinfeng and her boyfriend, Li Zhijie are
considering marriage, but during Zhijie's proposal, Jinfeng
tells him that he might reconsider due to her eccentric family,
who had frightened off her 5 previous boyfriends. Zhijie is
truly sincere, and he resolves to meet her family to win their
consent.
The
pair set off to Jinfeng's hometown where Li Zhijie is subjected
to all kinds of "tests" by her grandmother and elders
to gauge his suitability as their beloved Jinfeng's husband.
Li Zhijie survives all and returns to Hongkong only to be
subjected to more tests by Jinfeng's parents to test his trustworthiness.
He has more hurdles to clear as he had to also obtain the
approval of Jinfeng's eldest brother in Singapore.
Zhijie
flies to Singapore, and was well received by Jinfeng's eldest
brother who treated him like family, entrusting him with the
expansion of his business, only to realise later that they
are actually bitter business rivals.
Will
Zhijie be able to survive all and claim his bride?
MOVIE
REVIEW :
Like
most Hong Kong comedies, this movie is a mixed bag, and contains
elements usually found in the 80s era where there is essentially
no central storyline and everything just went with the flow.
Hacken
Lee plays a corporate hotshot Li Zhijie, who's sitting on
the brink of a promotion, and is contemplating marrying his
long time girlfriend Huang Jinfeng (Hu Jin, in an "act-cute"
role), to boost his chances since his corporation is family
friendly. To test his sincerity, Jinfeng has to bring him
home to be subjected to various tests by her family members,
ranging from her granny and nanny in China, back to her parents
in Hong Kong, followed by her brother in Singapore.
Just
like Hollywood's Meet The Parents, Zhijie is subjected to
various nonsensical tests (or so it seemed) to test his limits
and patience, and most of the tests involved the eating of
strange bugs and medicine, getting unexpected seduced by a
family member, and even be subjected to numerous physical
abuses which involved the prodding of some orifices. But the
family always seem to have a logical explanation to what they
are doing, which piles on the implausibility of it all.
It's
perhaps the last bit in Singapore that seemed to offer yet
another subplot about the decision between love, family and
work - if given a choice, where will your priorities lie?
Emulating Wong Fei Hong's medical hall and with having staff
named after the legend's disciples, there are plenty of mediocre
jokes piled upon in this segment, including a scene with shades
of another earlier Clifton Ko directed movie, Chicken and
Duck Talk (1988), starring Michael Hui.
Alan
Tam plays a total of 4 roles here, ala the multiple roles
Eddie Murphy did for The Nutty Professor. Here, Tam stars
as the grandmother (you cannot recognize him here under the
thick facial mask), the stoic father, the happy-go-lucky younger
brother, and the older brother with a paunch, who owns a medical
hall in Singapore. Hacken Lee seemed to have sleepwalked through
his role, offering nothing much to make his Zhijie character
memorable.
Being
co-produced by Mediacorp Raintree Pictures also meant that
some Mediacorp artistes had their chance to star in the feature
film, with the likes of Ng Hui and Star Search winner Jeff
Wang handed supporting roles, as do various others in cameo
appearances. Even Gurmit Singh's Phua Chu Kang managed to
have a cameo role scripted inside.
But
as the usual Clifton Ko directed comedies go, it's always
all's well that ends well, steering the storyline back to
a typical fictional fluff ending.
SPECIAL
FEATURES :
Included are two trailers - We are Family and Dragon Tiger
Gate. The trailer of the latter movie suffered from a bad
transfer, and thus has a VHS quality feel
to it.
There
is a Making Of documentary for We Are Family lasting about
24 minutes, which includes interviews with the principal cast,
and showcases Alan Tam's
makeup process to transform him into an old woman, amongst
the 4 roles that he took up in the movie. But what irks is
the dubbing of this Making Of into
Mandarin, making it quite unnatural, and had some of the jokes
cracked being lost in translation.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
There
are 4 audio selections, whichever that suits your fancy. Either
go with the Cantonese track, or the Mandarin one, each available
in Dolby Digital in 2.0
or 5.1. Subtitles are available in English or Mandarin, but
this reviewer only managed to sit through with the English
subtitles on, and spotted some typos, grammatical errors as
well as certain lines which do not accurately reflect what
the intent of the dialogue was..
MOVIE
RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Stefan Shih
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