If you want to be happy, please laugh! “Laughter is an instant vacation” from a horrible day. When I want to laugh, I will watch a comedy film!
The past great Hong Kong comedians are no longer spring chicken, and a lot of them pass on acting. Michael Hui (許冠文) is 83. Stephen Chow (周星馳) is 64. Mimi Chow (朱咪咪) is 71. Kingdom Yuen (苑瓊丹) is 62.
The bleakness of Hong Kong film industry is primarily driven by the audience’s new viewing habits i.e. shifting from cinema films to mobile entertainment. The dominance of global streaming platforms with attractive contents is another reason for the decline. As a result of the downturn, there has been a serious brain drain of film talents to Chinese mainland .
Nowadays, it is, in a way fortunate, that it is much easier for local young talents to break out through low-budget film productions because these projects allow creative expression and acting freedom, and are no longer disciplined by box-office gate keepers. The films can also rely on actors’ raw performance rather than other calculated piles up in the film. In high-budget film-making systems, the massive financial risk often prevents investors from gambling on unproven actors or directors.
The low-budget environments in Hong Kong invert financial constraints into an emerging powerful launch pad. Very impressive young directors and movie stars are now trying very hard to seize any opportunity to surpass their predecessors. These young ones now provide fresh energy to the local film industry.
The recent good comedy Dog Day Evening (一個部門的誕生) in Hong Kong is a tribute to the famous 1975 Hollywood film Dog Day Afternoon (黃金萬兩) which is about a kidnapping story. The movie is also inspired by a true event in Hong Kong in 2014 in which a young man assaulted the front desk staff of a TV company after a dispute over his mother’s failure to terminate a Pay TV service contract.
Dog Day Evening is a very funny absurd comedy that thrives nicely on deliberate illogicality, paradox and nonsensical situations. The director is Mak Tin Shu (麥天樞). Known as the award-winning screenwriter that is recognised as shining, this movie marks Mak’s directorial debut. His work is an intellectually menacing success. It makes smart people into realizing that stupid people can actually be more clever. The underdogs at least have the honest courage to insist on the truth.
The story of Dog Day Evening is hilarious. A young man went inside the customer service office of a Pay TV station. He wanted to terminate his grandmother’s TV subscription. The staff, bound by the complicated termination procedures, made things extremely difficult for him. The young man lost his emotions, and kidnapped the staff and customers in order to get what he wanted. Policemen, reporters and the senior TV executives all rushed to the scene and tried to serve their self-interest…
3 young and brilliant comedians acted extremely well in the movie: the plump and quick-witted Micheal Ning (白只), the fat and nerdy Mak Pui Tung (麥沛東) and the skinny and tricky Yeung Wai Lun (楊偉倫). They were all trained professionally by the renowned Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Ning plays the role of an apathetic receptionist, Mak acts as a clumsy policeman and Yeung is a shrewd telephone operator in the drama.
While enjoying the funny movie, I totally forgot that I was watching actually 3 actors. The 3 young talented comedians completely disappeared into the character and made me believe they were real persons in our society. They naturally draw their power from the relatable human connections in the reality into their acting. They successfully make their characters resonate universally; and the entire audience in the cinema laughed heartily.
We have got too many handsome boys and pretty girls in the pop music scene. They are only “babos”! In the local movie world, we do need more dynamic and special actors like the above 3 young stars to boost the competitiveness of Hong Kong films.
This article can also be found at the following sites:
