Fortune Buddies

Chung Shu Kai

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Hong Kong’s Hui brothers found success with a string of comedies which focused on working-class folks and their hare- brained get-rich-quick schemes.

Fortune Buddies employs that same formula, but without success. Actor-hosts Louis Yuen, Wong Cho Lam and Johnson Lee share an easy chemistry and have that will-do-anything-for-a-laugh spirit which sees them togged out in bad drag and getting beaten up in wrestling matches.

Despite this, Buddies is only intermittently amusing and engaging. The Mandarin dub of the original Cantonese dialogue probably did not help, either.

The film is less a cohesive work than a series of gags and skits, making it hard for the audience to root for the characters, and yet it is not madcap enough to keep one in stitches. One is better off revisiting the Hui brothers’ classic flicks instead.

(ST)