For the teenage fans of singers Sammi Cheng and Richie Jen, Summer Holiday will provide a pleasant hour-and-a-half away from the summer sun. More mature viewers and non-fans, beware. Beautifully photographed by cinematographer-turned-director Jingle Ma, the comedy-romance-musical is an effective tourist promotion for the sun, surf, and sand of Malaysia. Cinematically, though, it will do little to promote Hong Kong cinema as a cutting-edge entertainment form for the new millennium.

Naturally, one neither expects nor desires Shakespeare in a breezy summer picture. But one does hope for a certain lightness of touch, a glow, a brightness that allows one to blissfully ignore any lapses in logic or flimsiness in plotting. Summer Holiday’s script simply doesn’t allow for such mindless exhilaration. It is a tiresome variation of the boy-meets-girl, boy-looses-girl, boy-gets-girl formula, chock full of puerile misunderstandings and tedious tantrums.

Sammi Cheng, fresh from her box office triumph Needing You, is handed a rather unattractive role as Summer Koo, an unsympathetic yuppie who, jilted by her fiancé, journeys to Malaysia to inspect a beach in which she has a 50% share. The other half of the strand is owned by Momocha (Richie Jen), a free-spirited beach bum who instantly falls in love with Summer. This is Jen’s best film role so far, allowing him to display more charm, personality, and flesh than in Jingle Ma’s ultra-sentimental Fly Me to Polaris or Jackie Chan’s Gorgeous.

The movie also affords Jen and Cheng a half-dozen opportunities to sing. The best comes at the beginning when, in true "beach party" tradition, Jen and two buddies (Michael Wong Kwong-leung) and Tan Kheng Seong) stroll along the seashore and strum their guitars. Tan Kheng Seong, better known by the nickname Ah Niu, is one of the most popular singers to emerge from Malaysia in recent years, and he displays a pleasing screen presence.

Unfortunately, the director is unable to sustain a sense of fun throughout the 92-minute running time. One never really understands why happy-go-lucky Momocha would want to tie himself to a scheming stick-in-the-mud like Summer. Nonetheless, all is resolved in typical "Hollywood" fashion, which may leave the critics groaning but will doubtlessly have the schoolgirls lining up for seconds.