Times may change, Hong Kong cinema may change, but Wong Jing pictures have a timeless quality. This is not to say they are classics, but that the master producer-director-writer churns out pictures with the same formulas he has employed for close to two decades. The major difference is that audience tastes have changed since Wong’s box office heyday—and, indeed, the heyday of Cantonese cinema—of the early 1990s, so that nowadays his movies, while still catering to a “lowest common denominator”, can no longer attract throngs of ticket buyers. Everyday Is Valentine (sic) boasts two huge idols in a moderately budgeted Wong-style pastiche (comedy-farce-romance) that even has some on-location shooting in Macao and Nepal. Not only do these attractions fail to overcome the sloppy and trite storyline, but that the targeted Easter holiday youth crowd is hardly stampeding theatre ticket offices.

Leon Lai is OK and Cecelia Cheung is Wonderful, OK Lai and Wonderful Cheung to be exact. He’s a direct descendant of Pinocchio whose silver tongue has helped him get many a girl (the film’s Chinese title translates as “The Charming Boasting King”). She’s a sweet young working girl who abhors liars. You can predict the rest. It’s not that the plot in these things matters so much, but the stale way in which Wong embellishes it turns Everyday Is Valentine into a fizzy soda without the fizz. Even such comic stalwarts as Kingdom Yuen King-tan and Ng Mang-tat as Wonderful’s mom and grandpa are unable to enliven the proceedings. They simply aren’t very funny, and the fault doesn’t lie with their comedy prowess.

There are occasional sparks of over-the-top humor that hit the spot, such as a bungled attempt at debt collecting by a Macao loan shark who threatens to rape Wonderful. Mama, grandma, and even grandpa volunteer to take her place, behavior that would be considered non-PC in the West but whose outrageousness is welcome in this sea of blandness.

Fans will enjoy the interpolated Leon and Cecelia song montages against the picture postcard backgrounds of Macao fireworks and the ancient temples of Katmandu. Travel ads and music videos achieve the same result in one-tenth the time.

2 Stars

This review is copyright (c) 2001 by Paul Fonoroff. All rights reserved. No part of the review may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.