My Cousin the Ghost
Director: Wu Ma
Year: 1987
Rating: 6.0
In this Sammo Hung
produced comedy, he allows a few of the very best HK character actors to
take this film for a crazy ride and give the audience a few laughs along
the way. It’s all quite silly and it takes a while for it to start humming,
but once it does it becomes an amusing tale of ghosts and family. This has
a very Chinese feel to it – a large non-nuclear family all living together
and loving each other – even if one of them is a ghost!
It begins with Richard Ng living in London
and going to the park to catch pigeons for his restaurant by luring them
into a basket while a dotty British couple keeps asking themselves “where
did all the pigeons go?” Back at the restaurant Ng gets into a spat with
his cousin Wu Ma, an illegal immigrant, and accidentally informs some immigration
people to this fact. Ma is sent home to HK where he becomes a cook and his
cousins – Kenny Bee, Mang Hoi and Tai Po – are all waiters. The film has a
number of skit like routines such as Ma’s old girlfriend having her wedding
dinner at the restaurant and the cousins thinking he has poisoned her food
and the lengths they go to not to serve the food.
One evening Ng shows up from London telling everyone he is back with loads
of money and wants to start a business in HK. Needless to say the whole family
welcomes him with very open arms! This whole male family lives together in
a small house – oh – and there are two female ghosts living upstairs! Not
that the men know this – the ghosts appear very human like and no one is the
wiser. But the ghosts are getting lonely for male companionship and
begin seducing two of the men – Ng and Mang Hoi. Ng falls immediately for
his ghost (Wong Wan Si) and does a very funny window washing tango with her.
And to make things just a bit stranger, Kenny gets a call from his relatives
in London telling him that Ng died a week ago! Ng’s spirit hasn’t realized
this small fact yet – but if it does before the first day of the second week
of his death, he will not be able to reincarnate. Wu Ma tells them this is
what is called an “aggrieved ghost”. So the boys get together and do everything
they can to make sure he doesn’t find out. No appetite? – due to the long
trip, no reflection? – mirror, what mirror, no pulse? - bad diet.
It all starts getting completely wacky when
the female ghosts reveal their true selves – by removing their heads among
other things – but neither Ng nor Mang really seem to mind. The catch is
the men have to be dead to accompany a ghost for eternity. For Ng that is
no problem, but for Mang this is a bit of a hitch. Its all in good fun –
with a few special effects thrown in for good measure.
