Treasure Hunt

Wong Jing

The story: Peggy (Cecilia Cheung) decides to travel to a remote island to direct an advertisement with the perpetually sozzled star Mr Big (Ronald Cheng). Angered by this, her husband takes off with their son (Lucas Tse). On the island, Peggy and gang encounter an environmentalist, Star (Shao Bing), his son Starlet (Peng Gen) and a group of baddies who are after a long-lost treasure.

If you are watching this for the cute moppet Lucas Tse’s big-screen debut, don’t bother.

The elder son of estranged celebrity couple Cecilia Cheung and Nicholas Tse appears only at the beginning and end of the movie. It is as if the four-year-old is already a big-enough star to do a cameo even though this is his first role.

While no one is expecting him to pull off a Victoire Thivisol (who controversially won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 at the age of five for playing a child dealing with grief in the drama Ponette), he really does not do much here.

We know that Lucas is capable of a more spirited showing given that he had previously upstaged Hong Kong actor-

director Stephen Chow at a press conference. He had said to the adoring media: “Hello, I love you. I love everyone. Don’t say my mummy is fat.”

It also irked to have him dubbed over in Mandarin. For all you know, some jaded six-year-old was passing himself off as four-year-old Lucas.

Even without him, though, this cheap and tacky looking film features an unusually large number of children. Mr Big has a daughter, his agent Wayne has a son and the environmentalist who comes from out of nowhere also has a son.

Bizarrely, the children tag along on the work trip to a remote island and Wayne’s son even joins the advertisement’s cast and crew when they head out for drinks. Was this Bring Your Child To Work day?

At least the child actors up the cute quotient and make the movie less excruciating to watch. In particular, Peng Gen steals the limelight in Lucas’ absence.

Otherwise, the film is mostly ludicrously irritating rather than entertainingly over the top, lazily tacking on a treasure hunt story on top of a family drama.

The baddies are from the cartoon school of villainy and the treasure map is a bad joke. There are Easter egg hunts more exciting than this treasure hunt.

(ST)