The seventh in a series of romantic comedies tied to the Chinese
New Year, All’s Well Ends Well 2012 flings four couples
through minor entanglements before delivering them to happy
endings. Plotwise a step up from last year’s casually homophobic
outing, All’s Well Ends Well 2012 skimps pretty severely on
actual comedy. Asian viewers will still enjoy watching various Hong
Kong movie stars make fools of themselves onscreen. Outsiders are
likely to be baffled by all the commotion.
Returning from All’s Well Ends Well 2011 are the four male
leads as well as the ebullient comedienne Sandra Ng, who starred
with Stephen Chow and Maggie Cheung in the first entry of the
series back in 1992. Ng plays Chelsia, a down-on-her-luck pop star
who latches onto Carl Tam (martial-arts star Donnie Yen in a fright
wig), once a member of a 1990s boy band. They audition for a
musical, leading to amusing parody videos of disco, Bollywood, and
Hong Kong pop duo The Twins, along with long dramatic passages
about staying true to your dreams no matter what everyone else
says.
Last year Louis Koo played a makeup artist who pretends to be gay
to advance his career; here he’s a blue-collar construction worker
who falls for high-class photographer Julie (Kelly Chen) with
disastrous results. Koo has fun stripping down for his modeling
sessions, and Chen is appropriately icy, but their storyline is too
predictable, and never builds to big laughs.
Raymond Wong, a producer on the series since its inception, plays a
divorce lawyer estranged from his wife and daughter. He agrees to
fill in as a father figure for orphaned Cecilia (mainland star Yang
Mi), who has a week to marry to gain her inheritance. An old-school
sentimentalist, Wong leans toward scenes that are squishy and
maudlin, although he does come up with a funny mahjong game
involving old pop songs and hopping vampires.
Last and weirdest, Chapman To is Hugo, a novelist who agrees to
date blind ballerina Charmine (Lynn Xiong) so she can experience
romance. A narcissist despite his looks—To reportedly based him on
director Peter Chan (Wuxia)—Hugo is both cruel and insecure, a
combination that results in very few laughs. In fact, the best joke
in the film is pretending that the stunning Xiong couldn’t find a
date.
The previous All’s Well films were pretty ramshackle
affairs, which was part of the fun. Imagine genuine Hollywood stars
showing up in a Scary Movie episode to mock their previous
performances in song and dance, and you get a sense of how All’s
Well Ends Well operated. This entry has a bit more narrative
cohesion, but at the expense of that “anything goes” humor that
made the series so watchable.
On the other hand, if the idea of making fun of Canto-pop, Asian
millionaires and Peter Chan cracks you up, All’s Well Ends Well
2012 is the film you’ve been waiting for.
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After School
Park Jung Min
It's All Too Much - YUI
Sound-G - Brown Eyed Girls