Reviewed by: danton Date: 01/03/2002 It appears that at some time around the handover, HK filmmakers simply ran out of English titles, and started naming all their films Those were the days. There are like half a dozen so named movies from that period. The best known is probably the Y&D movie dealing with Chicken's childhood. The subject of this review, however, is a lesser known feature directed in 97 by Vincent Kuk with an ensemble cast that includes Dayo Wong, Natalis Chan, Francis Ng, Cheung Tat Ming, Shu Qi, Maggie Cheung Ho Yin and Monica Chan. The movie's premise is pure genius: At an awards ceremony, an arrogant postmodern HK director (a thinly disguised parody of WKW) makes some disdainful remarks about the Cantonese cinema of the 60s. As punishment, he gets sent back in time to 1967 and is forced to stay until he makes a movie that at least one person will like. From this inspired starting point, the movie manages to create a nostalgic send-up of a by-gone era of HK movie-making, spoofing many of the legendary stars of that period in the process. I'm not very familiar with that period, so many of the references to actors and movies went over my head, but I did manage to recognize a number of them, including Patrick Tse (Nic Tse's father?), Josephine Siao and Kwan Tak Hing. This is a nice companion film to The Golden Girls, although TWTD is less nostalgic and sentimental, and plays more like an extended SNL skit. Accordingly, the actors in the cast don't bother doing any real acting - they're impersonating, and having a ball doing it. And the recreations of famous sixties movies like Black Rose of Buddha Fist are hilarious (sort of like what Tim Burton did in Ed Wood). Simultaneously, the movie also parodies modern day HK movies, most prominently of course through the central character of WKW, whose portayal is deadly accurate. Three of his movies are restaged in a 60s setting, including Days of being Wild, Happy Together, and funniest of all, Ashes of Time. In the most delicious of ironies, WKW eventually manages to find one person who likes his movies (I won't spoil who, but it's a well known figure in today's HK movie scene), and is allowed to return. The movie ends with three parodies of current films, with the idea being what they would have turned out like if starring those legendary actors from the sixties. We get to see a new version of the famous bus scene in Police Story, the seduction scene between Carina Lau and Anita Yuen in He's a Woman She's a Man, and funniest of all, the ending of Young and Dangerous, with Kwan played by the Patrick Tse character (who of course is played by Francis Ng!). The ending of Y&D is altered in a particularly funny way and i only wish the real Y&D had gone the same path... I thoroughly enjoyed this film, even though I probably missed most of the in-jokes. However, I probably wouldn't recommend the movie to anyone who doesn't have a good knowledge of HK movies. Note: of the 4 reviews below, only the first one is about this 97 effort - the other three are wrongly linked!!!

Reviewed by: hkcinema Date: 12/08/1999 Forward director Wong Jing Wai during an award ceremony pressconference curses the early Cantonese Film period to be the Dark Ages of Hong Kong films then argues and fights with director Wong Sing Fat. Later he returns to the past to the set of a Cantonese film in 1967, meets a group of stars who have yet to become stars, makes several alternative image specialty films, attracts the admiration of actresses Man Bo Chu and Shiu Fong Fong, and finally causes the group of actors and actresses to fight and break up...... [Reviewed by Next Magazine]