Film Name:八星報喜 / 搭錯愛情線 / The Eighth Happiness
Gathering many golden stars, nonsensical comedy plots and family-friendly storylines, Wong Pak Ming’s flavourful Hong Kong New Year’s Eve comedy 《The Eighth Happiness》 enters the audience’s eyes as promised. The film continues the tradition of “The Eighth Happiness” series, which is based on the principle that the most important thing is to have fun. Family harmony is the happiest, love is the happiest, and dreams come true is the happiest. Although the film does not congratulate the happy new year, it buries all the blessings in the story.
In the midst of the firefights and killings, it is easy to imagine how delightful this film is, as it is a story about the transformation of the common man into a master. Picking up a dad to help choose a husband, middle-aged crazy men and women with teenage dreams, a golden phoenix and a pauper, a literary lewd nerd and a blind girl with a high beauty quotient. The good thing about New Year’s comedy is that it turns all the impossibilities into possibilities, and how seemingly incompatible combinations can blossom under the director’s wonderful hand.
The film presents the family’s feuds, the love between a man and a woman, and the mid-life crisis of a dream, all of which the audience in front of the camera can relate to. However, the focus of the film is not to expose the alienation and misunderstanding of interpersonal relationships between the society and the family, or the real pressure of the difference in status and height between men and women in love, but to make the audience detach themselves from the dreary life through the light and funny witty and natural camera language and style, and make the audience relax in the name of the Chinese New Year. In other words, the film succeeds in brainwashing the audience, making you realise that life is good, and that if you buy a lottery ticket, you will definitely win five million.
Although for the sake of unlimited money power of the mainland market, in recent years Huang Baiming Hong Kong film gas has faded a lot, but in the nostalgia of another spring, 《The Eighth Happiness》 traditional Hong Kong-style characteristics once again attached to the phenomenon of polarisation. On the one hand, the audience laughs a lot and is pleased that this is the best “happy” series in recent years; on the other hand, the audience has a lot of facial expressions and feels that the story is really confusing and nonsensical, but they can’t help but be driven by the actors’ performances and lines.
In terms of storytelling and style, 《The Eighth Happiness》 has not compromised with the Mainland, and continues to follow its principles of exaggeration, spoofing and bottomlessness. As it turns out, Wong Pak Ming’s decision is correct in the face of the many compromised Hong Kong films that have become all over the place. And taking care of the mood of the mainland audience, the film’s grasp of details and lines cannot be faulted when it comes to the issue of universality. The “suggestive gift” and “compensatory gift” created by Louis Koo and Kelly Chan before and after the sex are destined to become the subtext of male-female flirting for a long time to come. The phrases “You think too much” and “Yes, I think too much” speak the minds of many “ambiguous” people.
In order to strengthen the combination of nostalgia and universality, the film also specially invited the most popular actress Yang Mi to join the film, so that she and the most distinctive Huang Baiming play opposite each other, with three-pointed baths, mahjong, happy ghosts and other settings have to traditional Hong Kong comedy homage. Such seemingly incompatible combinations have witnessed a harmonious effect.
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