words yvonne teh

Comedy is king of the screen as the Chinese calendar year is born.

As film fans know full well, certain seasons bring forth certain kinds of movies. These days, in Hong Kong as well as Hollywood, the summer is reserved for big, often brainless, blockbusters. Just as predictably, Hollywood tends to roll out new Oscar contenders towards the end of the year, while Christmas wouldn’t be the same, at least in the USA, without Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life – the feel-good classic in which Jimmy Stewart’s businessman discovers he has touched a whole host of people in positive ways – on TV.

Back in 1994, Hong Kong cinema also came out with a festive film entitled It’s a Wonderful Life. Rather than a remake of the 1946 Hollywood classic though, that film, whose Chinese title translates as ‘Big Rich Family’ was an archetypal Chinese New Year movie, more comic than dramatic (even with its share of heartwarming moments), that featured star names like the legendary Kwan Tak Hing (in his final film appearance). It was merry entertainment for a multi-generational family.

Although Chinese New Years past have seen local cinematic offerings that are surprisingly dark and filled with violence and fatalities (notably last year’s drug-focused crime drama Protégé, directed by Derek Yee), such works are the exception rather than the rule for a time of year in which superstitious folks – and that can mean virtually every Hong Konger! – take pains to avoid inauspiciously mentioning death. Instead, as stated by the HK Film Archive, which will be presenting a Fun, Fun, Fun: Celebrating Chinese New Year mini-programme of Chinese New Year films from the 1950s and ’60s this February, “a dose of laughing fun is the best way to celebrate Chinese New Year with friends and family”.

So it is no coincidence that the Fragrant Harbour’s box office king, Stephen Chow Sing Chi, has appeared in his share of huge lunar New Year hits that coaxed gales of laughter from their audiences. These days the megastar popularly known as Sing Jai is the undisputed main man whenever he appears in a movie but there was a time in his two-decade-long film career when he was more likely to be found in the ensemble cast of slapstick Chinese New Year comedies like All’s Well, Ends Well (1992) – where he and Maggie Cheung Man Yuk stole the show with their antics, including their spectacular enactment of the Double Inverted Eiffel Tower Kissing Technique! – and All’s Well, Ends Well ’97 (1997).

Since 1999, however, when Chow made his full directing debut with a Chinese New Year romantic dramedy entitled King of Comedy, it has been pretty much understood that Sing Jai will be the biggest box office draw of any work he graces. (And that is indeed the case with this year’s CJ7, yet another movie timed to play in local theatres during the most important festive period in the Chinese lunar calendar.)

Still, if film fans are asked to name their favourite Stephen Chow Chinese New Year film, chances are high they will plump for Forbidden City Cop, a festive offering from 1996 notable for female lead Carina Lau holding her own against the male star and the two thespians combining to give a winning portrayal of an ideal married couple blessed with wonderful chemistry and considerable charm. At the same time, when thoughts turn to candidates for best Chinese New Year romantic comedy, the movies of another Chow must also rate a mention, as unlikely as it may seem to those who know him mainly through his Hollywood films or John Woo’s Hong Kong works.

Farces no longer appear to be his thing but in times past Chow Yun-Fat readily showed off his comic talent. And while his comedies include non-festive laugh riots with outrageous titles like 100 Ways To Murder Your Wife (1986) and The Greatest Lover (1988), some of his most fun work was in romantic comedies like Chinese New Year 1988’s The Eighth Happiness (one of whose final scenes features a memorable Cantonese opera sequence), 1990’s The Fun, The Luck and the Tycoon (in which Chow plays a rich man who takes a job as a janitor in a restaurant to romantically pursue its owner) and 1992’s Now You See Love, Now You Don’t (in which the Fat man hams it up as an ultra-traditional village headman all aghast when his beloved returns from England a changed and modern woman).

Jackie Chan is another local movie personality turned international star who has left his mark on the Chinese New Year movie genre, especially in the most recent golden era of Hong Kong cinema from the mid 1980s to mid ’90s. As with Stephen Chow (in whose King of Comedy he made a cameo appearance), Jackie Chan’s directing debut came in a Chinese New Year film in which he was also the star. Over the years, many other Chinese New Year movies followed in the wake of Dragon Lord (1982), most of which – like Armour of God (1987), Dragons Forever (1988) and The Accidental Spy (2001) – have a high action along with comedy quotient.

In 1999, however, he chose to make a romantic comedy that co-starred the decades younger Taiwanese starlet Hsu Chi (aka Shu Qi) for Chinese New Year. Although Gorgeous was no slouch at the local box office, and boasts a reciprocal cameo from Stephen Chow in the bargain, it was largely and retrospectively deemed to be a misstep for Chan. (It is not every day a rom-com attracts comments like the infamous internet query regarding the aging actor’s choice of co-star: “Who will he have next – a foetus?”)

Tony Leung Chiu Wai may not be able to claim as his the Chinese New Year movies he appeared in the same way Stephen Chow or Jackie Chan can theirs, yet he has been in festive comedies that rank, if not among the best, at least among the most memorable and outrageous. And no, we are not talking Gorgeous (in which he has a supporting role as a mincingly gay guy) here. Rather, there is the head-turningly bizarre The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993), Jeff Lau’s superstar-studded parody of wuxia movies in general along with the same martial arts novel by Jin Yong (aka Louis Cha) that served as the inspiration for Ashes of Time (1994), the desert epic from Wong Kar Wai boasting many of the same actors and actresses as the manic comedy that preceded it by several months. (Imagine, if you can, the handsome actor – most recently seen in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007) – with sausage lips and elephantine ears and you get a sense of how demented it all is!)

Since the turn of this century, however, the man associated with the most entertaining and imaginative Chinese New Year movies has not been an actor but someone who has stayed squarely behind the scenes. In tandem with Milkyway Image doyen Johnnie To, director-producer-scriptwriter Wai Ka-fai made Wu Yen (2001), a cross-dressing costume comedy featuring three female leads, one of whom (Anita Mui) plays a man and, at one stage, a man trying to pass off as a woman, and Fat Choi Spirit (2002), a Chinese New Year comedy whose mahjong main theme also qualifies it for another popular local genre, the gambling comedy.

Then, without To but with a whole host of stars, Wai made Fantasia (2004). A nostalgic comedy with more rhyme than reason (and probably proudly so!), it has Lau Ching Wan, Jordan Chan and Louis Koo effectively impersonating the Hui Brothers, Michael, Ricky and Sam. (For the uninformed, they were comedy kings from a few decades back with movies like Games Gamblers Play (1974), The Private Eyes (1976) and Security Unlimited (1981)). Cecilia Cheung plays a character originally essayed by Josephine Siao Fong Fong in John Woo’s Plain Jane to the Rescue (1982), albeit ‘modernised’ up to become a student of Hogwarts, and, as if things weren’t enough on the weird side already, the Twins (aka Gillian Chung and Charlene Choi) appear as a pair of magic chopsticks!

For my part though, the movie that best encapsulates the Chinese New Year spirit has to be Tsui Hark’s The Chinese Feast (1995). A good humoured paean to family, love and the wide range of foods Chinese relish (including items people from many other cultures would not allow near their lips), it ends with the heartwarming sight of the comedy’s cast and crew sitting down to eat together, but first turning to the camera to acknowledge and toast the film’s audience before tucking into their banquet!