DELETE MY LOVE (Delete爱人) DVD (2014)

SYNOPSIS: So Boring (Wong Cho-Lam), a nobody who often speaks in an abrupt manner, considers himself being underappreciated. He has neither career satisfaction nor warmth from family, to top it up, he even makes wrong friends. His good friend Andy-D whose aimless loyalty always gets him into trouble which often embroils Wing. Despite all the negativity, Wing has a gentle and virtuous childhood sweetheart, Bobo Chung, who always comforts him when he is dejected. Wing receives a weird text message one day, saying: Ever thought of deleting those you dislike? On Wing’s birthday, Fat Ma fires him with some ridiculous reasons, Wing is aggrieved by the event and accidentally kills Fat Ma in the quarrel. He moves the body to the car park and puts it in the boot of Fat Ma’s car. Wing returns to the office and finds Bobo and his colleagues throwing him a surprise birthday party. Wing is confused when everyone addresses him Boss Ma. Wing sneaks to take a look in the boot, where he finds it empty! As the story continues, how would Wing use this incredible superpower to change his life? Will Wing live a perfect life happily ever after?

MOVIE REVIEW:

A slight departure from his usual outputs, prolific HK writer director Patrick Kong’s (A Secret Between Us, Mr & Mrs Single) latest comedy is filled with an unexplained fantasy element that ultimately fails to rival even the worst of Wong Jing’s effort.  

Rising TV actor and comedian Wong Cho-Lam plays So Boring, a nobody working as a marketing exec who suddenly realize he possessed the ability to DELETE anyone he detest. And the long list include his bastard of a boss (Michael Hui), his obnoxious mum (Yuen Qiu), his so called best friend, Andy Lau (Alex Fong) and his kind-hearted, dim-witted girlfriend of sorts, Bo (Ivana Wong). 

To his credit, Kong does have a certain flair for comedy but he needs a co-writer and a co-director to uplift this mediocre material. Maybe a couple more sessions of rewrite would be better. To be honest, nobody in the HK film industry has yet achieve the heights of Wong Jing and Kong’s nonsensical brand of comedy only turned out to be irritable than rib tickling. Take for instance, the character of So Boring’s roly-poly assistance whom for no reason always attempts to to act and talk cute while the frequent digs at TV station ATV and Fong’s awkward impersonation of Andy Lau only served to prove the material is fast running out of gas.  

I’m not one of those who find Wong Cho-Lam annoying in fact Wong can be funny under the right circumstances and material. But with a pretty weak opening and Wong’s comic timing not in check, the 103 minutes comedy took almost an eternity to take off. Even old-timer Michael Hui seems lethargic playing the same old mean-boss-character after a long screen absence.

Nevertheless, things do brighten a little after So Boring develops his powers through text messages! His godawful boss turned into everyone’s favourite half-angmoh Michael Wong while his mum became Nancy Sit and his best friend is now Robert Downey Jr’s doppelganger, musician Eric Kwok. Even if you don’t find Kong’s scripting entertaining at least the numerous cameos and cast do help liven things up!

Kong has the tendency to inject some preachy stuff into his movies and Delete My Love has some life lessons to learn from especially a teary segment about true love and a haphazard last act that wrapped the entire deletion affair. Wong Cho-Lam is definitely not the next Stephen Chow and Kong not the next Wong Jing in line. With that being the case, you can safely skipped Delete My Love. 

SPECIAL FEATURES:

NIL

AUDIO/VISUAL:

Delete My Love boasts a Mandarin and Cantonese 5.1 soundtrack though it hardly has any use for it. Visual is bright and images respectable for TV viewing. 

MOVIE RATING:

DVD RATING :

Review by Linus Tee

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