In response to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jeffrey Lau Chun-Wai directed "The Fantastic Water Babes" (2010), because Gillian Chung Yan-Tung was involved in the private photo incident, the ban has not been officially lifted. The film needs to be postponed. However, Fong Lik-Sun, the male protagonist of this film, immediately took over another film "Metallic Attraction: Kungfu Cyborg" (2009) by Jeffrey Lau, the film is reminiscent of "counterfeit" "Transformers" (2007) in publicity. The computer technology effects produced in Hong Kong and Mainland China are still far from Hollywood. Although the technical department of this film has made great efforts, compared with the alien effect of Jeffrey Lau's previous film "A Chinese Tall Story" (2005), this time it is progress and thrift. The film's box office in the Mainland was good, but in Hong Kong was quite bleak, with only more than 1.2 million HK dollars. The actor Fong Lik-Sun also publicly expressed his disappointment.
In fact, Fong Lik-Sun also said in an interview that the film is not like a promotion offensive, it is a "counterfeit" "Transformers", but a funny "A. I. Artificial Intelligence" (2001), which tells the story of the robot K-1 played by Fong Lik-Sun, falling into the emotional world of human beings, he fell in love with the policewoman So-mui played by Sun Li. In the ending scene, he showed love to So-mui's ear and "disappeared", which is a typical romantic tragedy of Jeffrey Lau. Although Jeffrey Lau has been teasing romantic tragedies in different package since the beginning of "A Chinese Odyssey" (1995), his attitude towards love is already very familiar to many audiences, but he still enjoys it, which encourages him to be obsessed with and confident in this topic. Interestingly, Jeffrey Lau chooses different themes each time to package the film into an interesting work. This time, the robot K-1 lived in a small village and followed Tsui Dai-Chun played by Hu Jun to handle the case. His extraordinary ability attracted So-mui's heart and made Tsui Dai-Chun and Kong, played by Ronald Cheng Chung-Kei, who have a crush on So-mui, very jealous.
There is still no shortage of Jeffrey Lau's black humor and laughter in the film. Unfortunately, this has been a "trick" repeated by Jeffrey Lau over the past ten years. The packaging and the background of "counterfeit" "Transformers" are not "the cup of tea" for Hong Kong audiences. Perhaps Jeffrey Lau has to continue to develop his Mainland market to serve audiences who are still interested in his comedy style. This is not to belittle the tastes of Mainland audiences, but Jeffrey Lau's comedy style is already "outdated" to Hong Kong audiences, and since he's not raising the level of his comedy style, it's not surprising that audiences leave him. However, in the Mainland, his comedy style which represents Hong Kong films with an "imaginative style", is still attractive due to the huge market. If he continues to repeat, it will soon be abandoned by Mainland audiences who are familiar with Hong Kong Cinema, it is only time.
By Kam Po LAM (original in Chinese)
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