Back in 1988, the two producers of Beauty and the 7 Beasts appeared in a movie entitled How to Pick Girls Up! whose plot revolved around three hapless men getting advice from a radio talk show host cum chauvinistic ladies man on how to woo members of the opposite sex. Nineteen years on, it is really difficult for most of us to believe that silly comic offering actually grossed $13 million at the local box office.

However, Wong Jing and Eric Tsang obviously remember, and now may be hoping against hope that lightning will strike in the same place twice. How else to account for Wong scriptwriting this 2007 effort that starts off with a similar premise – only, this time around, five socially inept bachelors seek advice on how to be successful both as actors and in love from a womanising thespian named Teddy (played by a bewigged Tsang)? And for what other reason would the filmmakers set the work squarely back in an era when Kai Tak was Hong Kong’s airport, clothes tended to be luridly patterned and blindingly psychedelic, and it was not completely improbable for an in-demand actor to appear in 28 movies in a single year?

Gordon Lam Ka Tung, Chin Kar Lok, Cheung Siu Fai, Wong Cho Lam and Lam Tsz Sin ham it up to the hilt in Beauty and the 7 Beasts as the effeminate Broke-back, bespectacled Preacher, eldest ‘brother’ Tony, youngest ‘brother’ Casanova and the bowl-headed Bruce respectively. But maybe the men behind the movie did realize after all that this particular storyline is pretty tired and old. For it is soon dropped in favour of a plot which trains the spotlight more squarely on that willing quintet’s supposedly hotshot actor sifu, Teddy, and his rivalry with fellow middle-aged thespian Rocky (Natalis Chan).

Along the way, two more plot strands and accompanying characters weave their way in and out and then back into the picture. One of these has Teddy belatedly discovering he has a voluptuous grown daughter named Pearl (Mainland Chinese actress Meng Yao). The other involves Teddy’s personal assistant Wendy (Jo Koo) who, late in the film, is revealed as – surprise, surprise! – a loving woman who really is prepared to stand by her man. And who is quite the bombshell when she lets her hair down.

Perhaps it’s because Wong Jing didn’t direct this film but, even while copious shots of scantily clad females litter Beauty and the 7 Beasts, ‘the weaker sex’ generally comes off better here than in many past movies in which the schlock-meister’s name appears in the credits. But that is almost the only good thing that I can write about it. For despite the efforts of the assembled talent (some of whom really shouldn’t be slumming it in works like this), what we have here is a wannabe comedy that actually is more laughable than laugh-a-minute, and is filled with lame jokes and ‘situations’ which already passed their sell-by dates years, if not decades, ago.

Yvonne Teh