"Beauty and the Breast" has some elements of a romantic comedy, a female buddy picture, a male buddy picture, an office romance and revenge against the insufferable. That it doesn't really develop any of them completely isn't a problem. While plots and subplots shoot all over the place there is an almost frenetic momentum that keep propels things through its first hour.

By then most of the what we are interested in has been dealt with. The overwhelmingly vapid and treacherous boss, Chu Kai Fat, has been exposed as a fraud and sent packing. Fatty, the brother he has tortured is the new chairman of the company. The two insufferable Bosnian sales executives are on their way out the door after the disasterous introduction of their Chechnyan breast enhancement cream. Yuki and her friends are running the company and the women once again have access to the only ladies room in the building.

All that remains is how Yuki and Mario and their sidekicks Amy and Harper will be reconciled--even the problem of the large womanly breasts that Mario and Harper have grown has been resolved.

Although the second part of the movie progresses in fits and starts there is still a lot to laugh at--the meeting between Harper and the former internet CEO, each of them with huge bags of toilet paper rolls, is hilarious.

One convention that is true of just about all movie making, whether Hollywood, Hong Kong or Europe--if one female character is supposed to be more attractive than another you simply state it. Lilliana and Cathalina are presented as real knockouts (mainly because of their large breasts) so for the first part of the movie the audience accept that they are more attractive than Yuki. The fact that Yuki is played by the astonishingly beautiful Michelle Reis can be ignored since we know that she will win (and become more beautiful, at least for purposes of the plot) than the Bosnians.

Francis Ng keeps his portrayal of the very shallow and pretentious Mario on just this side of annoying. He and Raymond Yip kept the character a bit low key so that his quirks and pathetic plots were even more obvious—not overshadowed by overacting, which is not the least common problem in movies like this.

Michelle Reis played the beautiful girl who is too good to be true. Mario is basically a stranger to her, but based on working in the same office and meeting him once, she picks him up on the street after he pretends to collapse, then takes him home, cleans his apartment and cooks his dinner. Since she is also jawdroppingly sexy, especially when she glances over her rectangular reading glasses, it is almost believable that Mario, while trying to seduce her to win a bet with the boss actually falls in love with her.

Daniel Wu and Wong Fat Fei stand out among a generally good cast of supporting players.

Recommended for those who like frothy comedies.