Mr. Fortune
Director: Cha Cheung-yee
Year: 1989
Rating: 6.5
I have been trying
to run down this early Chingmy Yau effort for a while and finally was able
to – but unfortunately there were no sub-titles. I thought I better watch
it anyway, as the chances of locating a sub-titled version are likely pretty
small. Though I got the gist of this light comedy, there is no doubt that
I missed out on some of the humor. Still a lot of it was physical comedy
and Chingmy still looks good – subs or nor subs! She does look different
though from her films of a few years later but I have never been able to
quite pin it down as to what looks different – perhaps it is just the hair
or perhaps she had a little re-modeling done!
She is the daughter of a wealthy magnate (Roy Chiao) and is a bit on the
wild side. So Chiao pressures one of his sub-ordinates to woo her and try
to settle her down. She learns of this while eavesdropping on the phone and
tries to escape her father’s influence by climbing out the window in this
apartment building.
In one of those “meet cute” scenes, she literally bumps into another tenant
on the window ledge and both practically fall to their deaths. Anthony Chan
is out on the ledge in order to make good with his girlfriend who is angry
with him. Chingmy lies and tells him that some people are after her and that
she is in great danger. So he takes her in and soon his life has been turned
upside down. He of course has no idea that she has a wealthy father.
Soon his girlfriend dumps him, he loses his job and he has triads after
him – but he has to admit that having Chingmy around is a lot of fun. As
any sane man would, his thoughts soon turn to love towards Chingmy – but
problems lie ahead – don’t they always?
Surprisingly, this film was produced by D&B (who usually specialized
in action - Yes Madam, Black Cat) – but it is an easy going enjoyable
comedy – that with subs would no doubt have been more so. It’s a good opportunity
to see early Chingmy before she became a sex goddess of HK films.