Follow the Star
Director: John Woo
Year: 1978
Rating: 7.0
This is surprisingly
funny. If pratfalls, gags and general idiocy is up your alley. 90 minutes
of it could be torture for most people but much of this is well executed
and I found myself chortling way more often than I expected. I am by nature
not a chortler, but this was so absurd and juvenile that the chortles just
kind of snuck out like a teenager after curfew. It is total Keystone Cops
humor and as silly as an ostrich at a formal black-tie dinner. And it is
directed by John Woo. Yes, that John Woo. Before A Better Tomorrow he went
back and forth between martial arts and very unsophisticated comedies. Most
of them didn't do that well at the box-office but it is interesting to look
at them now knowing what lay only a few years ahead for him. His comedies
are a mix - I thought Money Crazy was fine, Laughing Times with Dean Shek
doing his best Charlie Chaplin imitation had its moments, as did Run Tiger
Run which seemed targeted towards children and To Hell with the Devil was
plain awful, painful. This one might be as well for people with classier
taste than me.
The film abounds with physical comedy of
bumping heads, crashing through walls, falling down, miss-aimed hits, eggs
on heads, chickens in mouths and so on. And throw in a few ghosts just for
the hell of it. This is Hong Kong comedy from that period. A jumbled mess
of various comedic styles all mashed together. The physical comedy
comes mainly in the form of fights or chases and the choreography (from Fung
Hak-on and Huang Ha) is very clever, intricate, at times dangerous and in
constant motion. It is one small routine or set piece after another. Something
clever or silly is happening at all times. It is a train that won't stop.
Again, whether you are built for this sort of thing may be questionable.
It should come with a safety warning.
It begins with Roy Chiao in bed. His room
is filled with contraptions ala Buster Keaton in one of his shorts. The alarm
clock sets a monkey free that wakes him up. One button brings up a spittoon
and a mechanical toothbrush, another button dresses him. The third most important
button brings out the booze which he happily imbibes for the whole movie.
His name is Drunken Sheng. He works as a car mechanic when he can keep his
eyes over. A teeny-bopper female singer comes in with her agent and their
wreck of a car. She is played by Lau Wan-na aka Rowena Cortes aka Rowena
Martin. She is a cutie in her teens. I can't find out much about her,
but she released a few pop albums (Not a Baby Anymore) and appeared as Leslie
Cheung's girlfriend in Teenage Dreamers and then after two more films she
got out of the business. She is up on Instagram.
The film revolves around five crooks who
want to kidnap her and force her to tell them where the money is that her
now dead father stole with them. They are the Keystone cops in this. Three
of them are well-known character actors - Fung Hak-on who has a deadly deck
of cards, Wong Chin with his metal hand that can eject as a weapon, Lee Hoi-sang
with a metal head, Chin Yuet-sang as a myopic assassin and Chan Pak-san as
a transvestite. It is a series of nutty attempts to kidnap her and Drunken
Sheng saving her. And a trip to the graveyard where ghosts are playing mahjong
and the Butterfly Lovers are released.
