A wealthy diamond salesman passes away, and so his family sends for his daughter (Sandra Ng) to come and take over the company. However, his son (Anthony Wong) and nephew (Shing Fui-On) have their own plans to get a hold of the family fortune. Wong finds a lookalike to fool his family, while Shing employs a small-time conman (Stephen Chow) to woo Ng and embezzle the money. As Chow and Ng begin to have real feelings for each other, the schemes begin to unravel, until Wong resorts to kidnapping the family so he can get away with a cache of diamonds.

While being hampered by an uneven script and haphazard editing (for example, it's never shown exactly how Wong finds the lookalike) When Fortune Smiles is still a very funny movie that also has some solid action sequences. In fact, I would say that this is Stephen Chow's best work before he hit it big with his first true "nonsense" comedy, All for the Winner. Though Chow's performance isn't as strong as most of his later work, the rest of the cast here shines.

In particular, I really enjoyed Shing Fui-On. Even though he is better known for playing heavies in the popular "heroic bloodshed" movies of the time such as The Killer, he has a flair for comedy that I wished more directors would have taken advantage of. Anthony Wong, complete with greasy mullet, turns in a suitably over-the-top turn as the film's villain. Sandra Ng doesn't have much to work with here, but her performance reminded me a bit of her work in the Golden Chicken films, which would finally get her out of the "ugly duckling" status most of her film roles fell under until a few years ago.

So while When Fortune Smiles isn't the greatest comedy Hong Kong has ever produced, Stephen Chow fans could do a whole lot worse than this. It's fast, funny, and never takes itself too seriously. Plus, as mentioned before, there is some good action as well, with a couple of sequences featuring the formidable Billy Chow. In this day and age of middling releases from Hong Kong, sometimes it's even the lesser-known movies from Hong Kong's "golden age" that manage to provide much more entertainment than many so-called modern "blockbusters", and When Fortune Smiles is even more proof of that.

[review from hkfilm.net]