Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2
Johnnie To
The story: At the end of Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (2011), analyst Cheng Zixin (Gao Yuanyuan) chose architect Fang Qihong (Daniel Wu) over financial hotshot Cheung Shen Ren (Louis Koo). In the sequel, the couple are due to tie the knot but Cheung is still unable to get over her. Complicating things further are Zixin’s brother Paul (Vic Chou), who has returned from France and falls for her new boss Yang (Miriam Yeung), who just so happens to be dating Cheung.

In the first film, Zixin dithers between two men – steadfast Qihong and and the slick Cheung. But even though she is supposed to be marrying Qihong here, the dithering is not quite over yet.
In the first film, Cheung is capricious and insensitive. Here, he seeks to get over his unhappiness by sleeping around and stringing Yang along, all the while still pining for Zixin.
In the first film, Zixin and Cheung flirted using Post-its as they worked in facing glass buildings. Here, he flirts with other women and Post-its again demonstrate their versatility as a piece of office stationery.
Why am I watching the same thing again?
As if conceding that the central triangle’s entanglements are not enough to fill up another movie, director Johnnie To (Blind Detective, 2013) hastily throws in two more characters. The addition of Zixin’s brother and her new boss are meant to complicate matters but it is hard to care when everyone acts like a petulant child.
Also, there is not much chemistry between Taiwan’s Chou and Hong Kong’s Yeung. And having him spout smatterings of French because he supposedly lived there does not make him charming – it merely makes him pretentious.
The misunderstandings between the various characters are so slight that they come across as the flimsiest of excuses to keep things moving along. It all threatens to tip over into farce, but stops short, wallowing instead in exaggerated dramatics such as having Cheung scale a building’s exterior.
If the first movie was an unwitting indictment of the sorry state of modern romance, this sounds its death knell. The actors deserve better and so do audiences.
(ST)