Easy Money
Director: O Sing-pui
Year: 1991
Rating: 5.5
Amy Yip and others
- but the others don't really matter as the only thing you will really focus
on is Amy Yip. The Yipster looks great whether it be in a sexy/hilarious
strip tease that has to be seen to be believed or jogging in spandex or bathing
in 5,000-year-old water in a Chinese Ghost Story parody. The director has
made a good effort to capture Amy in some intriguing situations that emphasize
her famous figure. The film begins though with Shing Fui-on, Simon Lui and
Wan Kwong all unemployed, broke, hungry, threatened to be chopped up by their
landlord and looking for work. They try door to door sales but that goes
very badly, next a fake charity with Shing dressed as a nun and that goes
equally badly. Then the film mercifully flips over to Amy Yip in a small
bar doing a strip tease in what looks like a Shirley Temple curly wig. It
is worth the price of admission but just like the men in the bar, we will
be disappointed if we expect to see her go beyond a General Audience rating.
When she (a double) starts doing back flips to avoid rolling ping pong balls
and banana peels it is a hoot.
Our three losers finally get a job after
Wan Kwong shows proficiency flirting with women and using kung-fu to kick
back chalk erasers thrown at him by the prospective boss. They are hired
by Mr. Wong played by Gabriel Wong, who looks like a nastier mini-Raymond
Wong, as his personal assistants. Meanwhile, Amy losers her job but her wealthy
friend Dumpling (Helen Yung) has come back to Hong Kong and hires Amy as
her secretary and then has Amy pretend to be her. Wan thinking that Amy is
the rich one makes a play for her (I can think of two better reasons) and
pretends to be wealthy himself while she is swimming, jogging (my neck still
hurts from watching) and a tight cocktail dress. Amy is looking for a rich
man so they make a perfect match. Wan with his two cohorts creates elaborate
scenarios to make her think he is rich - but as these things always go they
begin running into people who know them and have to frantically cover their
tracks.
At one point during a dinner with a spinnable
table they all try to put an aphrodisiac into other drinks and Amy distracts
the men by telling them she is a Muslim and they all need to get down and
pray and then begins calling out Hallelujah's. This is totally silly Cantonese
comedy that hits the mark on occasion. And misses just as often. Amy has
never looked better with her short hair, pumpkin pie cute face and spectacular
figure. Shing Fui-on is wonderful here playing against his usual terrifying
triad persona as a gentle piano playing ballad singing shy giant who falls
for Amy but gets molested by the equally terrifying Lo Fan who is built like
a brick-house. Simon Lui and Dumpling also become attracted to one another.
Near the end we are treated to an appearance by Mama Hung who is the mother
of Dumpling as she has to pay off a ransom for her kidnapped daughter who
is of course Amy, the wrong girl. She witnesses a kung fu match up and I
was hoping dearly that she would join in. She was only 82 at the time.
She is a legend in Hong Kong films. The
mother of Sammo of course but in her own right as well. When she was a baby,
a fortuneteller told her parents that if she weren’t brought up as a boy,
she would have an early death. So she was allowed to participate in many
activities that were usually open only to males – one of these being martial
arts that she began practicing at the age of 8 – though initially she had
to disguise herself as a boy. Living in Shanghai, she became familiar with
the film industry and when producers were tinkering with the idea of making
a fantasy film with a female martial artist, Chin Tsi-ang’s name was brought
up. Thus in 1925 – at the age of sixteen, Chin became the very first female
martial artist in a film – The Lady Swordfighter of Jiangnan. This and following
films (such as the White Swallow Swordswoman, The Flying Swallow) made her
a star in Shanghai, but at the end of the 1930’s she moved to Hong Kong where
she and her husband (Hung Chung-ho) formed a film studio – The Sanxing Film
Company. They focused on martial arts films and produced the very first Fong
Sai-yuk film in 1938 called “The Adventures of Fong Sai-yuk”. She continued
acting for many years as well – and still somehow managed to find time to
have five sons and two daughters. She passed away in 2005 but showed up in
cameos till 2002 - one of her last films was In the Mood for Love. She has
290 credits on HKMDB.
