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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FIVE STARS FOR LUCKY, August 18, 2000
This review is from: My Lucky Stars (DVD)
Before we start, I need to set one thing straight. THIS IS NOT A JACKIE CHAN MOVIE! This is a film that features an ensmble cast of frequent hong kong players. Jackie Chan is included(and has one of the best fight scenes of his career)but is very limited. This is a fun stylish(very stylish)martial arts comedy. Starts off with an explosively funny and exciting car chase and a small fight.(ninjas in blue? Of course)This sets the plot in motion and the next hour is mostly comedy scetches that introduce the five lucky stars. The humor is very strange but very amusing.(also very juvinile,if that,but still very funny) It's interesting to see humor from other countries. A very different sense of humor than the US, but i like it. It is, however,an aquired taste(consider this your warning) The final fight scene(s) are among the most fun and original That I have ever seen, so even if you don't like the humor, the climax is alone worth it! Sammo is a fantastic director and if you like his style of directing, I highly reccomend it. I have seen all the movies featuring Jackie Chan as well. This is in the top 3 that i have seen. (the others being police story and rumble in the bronx) i also reccomend getting the dvd. the video is poorly dubbed and scenes are chopped up. the subtitles on the dvd is fantastic and the widescreen is great in a 1.85 aspect ratio.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Hard to Follow, but Very Enjoyable Once You Get It, September 21, 2001
This review is from: My Lucky Stars (DVD)
This was the first subtitled Jackie Chan (sorta) movie I ever got, and I will have to say that it was quite possibly the worst choice for the first in the world. When I read on the back that Jackie was in Japan, I thought that it was written by some idiot who thinks that Jackie Chan is Japanese; but when he called his superior in Hong Kong, and the phone had a Japanese flag, I got REALLY confused! There's also a scene in which the Lucky Stars (the five main characters) get in a sticky situation, and must be recognized by a gang as being good people by speaking with the same Cantonese accent. I sadly couldn't reach the ending the first couple of times I sat to watch it. However, after a month or so, I finally caught on, and discovered that once you get into the right state of mind (and after those two parts), it's quite easy to enjoy! Following it accurately no longer mattered to me! Why? It's because I discovered the secret: this movie is all about the characters and the situations of the present scenes! Even the complete absense of Jackie Chan through 65% of this movie no longer mattered; the Lucky Stars were all very real, and VERY likable! The sequences with them lusting over Ba Wah are all very amusing, and the fight scenes (which DOES NOT include Benny "The Jet" Urquidez) in the end are all great! My Lucky Stars is enjoyable fun from beggining to end. Once you get through the strangeness of the movie, it could dominate your next week's worth of nights by making you watch it over and over again! Have fun, and enjoy!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Do not dry your hands on the fax paper, February 4, 2009
Some films seem destined to have sequels. This is especially true if you have a multitude of popular stars that do not have to contribute to the whole film (and if one does not work out replace him), a boilerplate formula and financial success on the first movie. In fact, My Lucky Stars (1985) was more of a hit in HK than its predecessor Winners and Sinners (1983) with the original raking in 22M HK dollars and the sequel 30.7M HK. While I have grown in appreciation of the first film, I have also grown a little less interested in the first sequel though a few segments transcend above the mostly mediocre material. When watching this film it is good to think of this as an ensemble piece not a Jackie Chan or a Sammo Hung film (though Sammo did direct this in his most prolific period and after the success of The Own and Dumbo (1984)). That frame of mind might help in enjoying this uneven picture more.
In the beautiful locale of Japan, Muscles (Jackie Chan) is chasing a corrupt Hong Kong cop (Lam Ching Ying: Mr Vampire) though an amusement park with the help of Ricky (Yuen Biao: Prodigal Son in an extended cameo compared to Winners and Sinners) until Ricky gets whisked away by a band of ninjas. This nice little 11 minute sequence of Jackie works well with the fight choreography and shows some nice jump stunts by Jackie. I am not sure of Sammo's use of slow motion in the beginning though. It just seems timed poorly (I have sensed this problem in a few of his movies like Mr. Nice Guy). There is also a strange scene where Muscles gets stopped by tourists to take a picture. If you were chasing a crook would you let yourself be stopped by tourists?
Jackie needs help to find his partner. The help will have to come in the form of five trusted crooks since the cops could be spotted by the former HK officer. The ringleader is Sammo (once again having a horrific haircut) and he (after a stint in jail) has to recruit the old gang: Rawhide (Stanley Fung: The Owl And Dumbo), Sandy (Richard Ng: Shanghai Express), Herb (Charlie Chin) and Round Head (Eric Tsang who is in this movie instead of John Shum from the first film). They will be lead by a legitimate police officer Inspector Woo (Sibelle Hu playing basically the same foil role as Cherie Chung did in the first - I did say this was a boilerplate formulaic movie) who is consistently being hit on by the males (during a very tiring six minute gag) while having to take them to Japan.
The whole second act of the film and the majority of the movie are the comedic sequences of Sammo getting the gang together, meeting the female assistant and going to Japan. While some of it can be funny (Richard Ng is almost always hilarious and those damn curly haired bus drivers), some of it is just strange like the Eric Tsang sequence of playing "fly" poker and some jokes just fill like filler. And there is that Bolo Yeung Sze cameo.
When the third act starts with the appearance of Jackie Chan the pace of the movie goes from stagnant to ludicrous speed (interesting how the comedy segments were less fun than the action). Without giving too much away the haunted house fight segment with Jackie Chan going through the maze like corridors is quite good and the most talked about aspect of this film is the Japanese villainess played by female bodybuilder Nishiwaki Michiko in her first Hong Kong role (she did not speak Cantonese at the time) and her fight with Sibelle Hu. Her fight introduction (disrobes her kimono and then flexes) has also been mentioned in many male-written reviews. There are other fights with Lam Ching Ying and Lau Kar Wing that are quite good if a bit short. Also check out that nasty fall toward the end - breaking bodies for our entertainment.
Fans of action films will find something to like in this movie. While it is quite uneven there are worthy scenes (especially the end and beginning) to watch several times. Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung fanatics will, of course, have to watch this, but on multiple viewings will probably only want to watch the first and third act. If you have not seen Winners and Sinners then see that film first. The comedy aspects did not work as well for me as the first movie and the characters seemed less in depth. Richard Ng was underused and that is enough to make me and anyone angry.
I have the uncut R1 Fortune Star/Fox release which has a good transfer but no extras except trailers. The big minuses are the dubtitles and no original mono. The dubtitles are quite atrocious because of the amount of narration (voice over) on the English dub causing a huge amount of phantom subtitles if you listen to the Cantonese track (no one speaks but the words are there) and at least one questionable in taste Japanese imitation. Also since a lot of the humor is verbal, a lot is lost in translation. Here is another example of a Hong Kong R1 release that does not match the Hong Kong Legends R2 release for extras including a Bey Logan commentary (unless you would prefer a scholar like Stephen Teo doing your commentary).
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