SYNOPSIS:
Ah
Kai is a witty yet lazy man. One day the company in which
he works in declares plans to lay-off people. Out of desperation,
they learn lion dancing. After one street performance, they
become instant celebrities.
A successful performance in a heavily reported event propelled
the art of lion dancing into the limelight. Soon the art starts
to deform and lion dancers are getting out of control. A restriction
by the government pushes Ah Kai and his family into desperation
again. Can Ah Kai reinstate the glory of the art and his family's
reputation?
MOVIE REVIEW:
To expect anything similar to Tsui Hark’s Once Upon
a Time in China III (1993) from this movie would be inappropriate.
Although both movies are about dancing lions (a traditional
Chinese practice that is most often seen during Chinese New
Year and other celebratory festivities like the opening of
new shops), the scale of things are extremely different for
these two pictures.
Come
on, you won’t be expecting to see spectacular displays
featuring thousands of dancing lions in a movie that didn’t
even make it to the big screens here, would you?
In
this 95-minute movie co-directed by actor Francis Ng (Exiled,
One Last Dance) and Marco Mak (House of Mahjong, Operation
Undercover), we see how this traditional practice is given
a modern twist when a competition is held and in turn inspiring
innovative (and sometimes ridiculous) spin-offs like “Dancing
Lion for Kids” and “Weight-Losing Dancing Lion”
courses and trends.
The
premise does sound interesting, and made us chuckle quite
a bit with its outrageous and silly scenes of aunties and
uncles signing up for the inventive classes designed by the
characters in the movie. But the amusement only lasted for
a while, before it became repetitive.
There
is a fine cast here, ranging from the versatile Ng who plays
a slacker (to be frank, his hip hop image in this movie did
irk us quite a bit), the effortless Anthony Wong (Initial
D, Exiled) who plays a
master of lion dancing and the ever-hilarious Teresa Mo (2
Young, Men Suddenly In Black 2) who plays a comical mother.
Elsewhere, expect to see other familiar Hing Kong faces like
Lam Suet (Eye
In The Sky, Exiled), Lam Chi Chung (Kung Fu Hustle, The
Iron Lady Iron Chef) and Ronald Cheng (Golden Chicken 2, Himalaya
Singh).
Everyone
appears to be having fun in this small scale production, and
that is enough to have you keeping your eyes glued to the
screen till the end of the movie, where the actors wittily
discuss at the dinner table why movies obligatory include
NG takes during their rolling credits.
MOVIE RATING:
Review
by John Li
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