Love tale with more tripe than real beef - June 27, 2001

[Sandy]

The Straits Times (Singapore)

June 27, 2001, Wednesday

SECTION: Life! Movies, Pg. L7

LENGTH: 528 words

HEADLINE: Love tale with more tripe than real beef

BYLINE: Foong Woei Wan

BODY:
OFF THE BOIL

Even the ever-charming Tony Leung Chiu Wai can't save this ill-scripted, uninspired love story from the big KO

FIGHTING FOR LOVE (PG) 110 minutes Opens tomorrow

SOME girls have all the luck. Last summer, Cantopop queen Sammi Cheng got paid to frolic with laid-back charmer Richie Ren in Summer Holiday.

This summer, she gets paid to romp with another laid-back charmer, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, in Fighting For Love.

In her latest romantic comedy, she is Deborah, an office Hitler who puffs on cigarettes and barks orders to a manufacturer over her mobile phone even as she is driving.

She will meet her match in Veg (Leung), the owner of a beef-soup shop, who is equally dangerous because he yells at his sister over his mobile even as he is breaking speed limits.

The movie opens with a bang, literally, when Deborah rams her car straight into Veg's as both are racing to the same hospital.

The hit-and-run is followed by a car chase and a comic, manic confrontation in the hospital carpark.

Whatever love-hate fireworks the writers can muster, however, fizzle out by Act Two, when the pair down one beer too many and promptly fall into bed.

A few plot manoeuvres later, Deborah is sharing a roof with Veg, who -- surprise, surprise -- turns out to be a rich man's son, complete with the requisite wacky family of Mum, sisters, brother and even a foreign maid.

Fighting is scripted by a trio of writers including director Joe Ma, who claims writing credits for The Days Of Being Dumb (1992), a zany spoof of the gangster flick genre.

Sadly, none of that sublime silliness is to be found in Fighting, which is more in the mode of crowd-pleasing fluff starring good-looking people, such as Feel 100% Once More (1996), also churned out by Ma.

For these purposes, Leung, Cheng and newcomer Niki Chow more than fit the bill.

The radiant Chow is suitably annoying as Veg's celeb girlfriend Mindy and the obstacle to the inevitable happy ending.

Cheng is winning withher gift for physical comedy and comic timing.

This is clear in two scenes where she affects a body-twisting jog to try to overtake Veg's fighting-fit Mum and where she tosses repartee at his foreign maid and imitates her accent without mocking her.

But the movie belongs to Leung, who is happily taking a break here from the soulful brooding called for in Hongkong auteur Wong Kar Wai's mood pieces.

He shows why he is a director's dream: his glances and facial expressions speak volumes even when the inane script gives him little to do.

Alas, the combined charm of these three cannot lift Fighting from the weight of its heavy-handed gags and its slow tread to the finish.

Midway through the movie, Deborah, who is helping out at Veg's eatery, jeopardises the secret of his trade by emptying a pot of beef juice which has been cooking for 30 years.

The two then slog to whip up a pot of beefy goodness in one night and, lucky for them, they get away with it.

Lucky for Ma too, moviegoers in Hongkong and elsewhere who are lapping up this entertainment seem not to mind that it is only as good as a bowl of hastily-concocted beef-tripe soup.