We Are Family (2006) - Movie Review

The latest offering from music-kings Hacken Lee and Alan Tam, We Are Family is a comedy that fails in some aspects, but succeeds in one thing: making you feel good about wasting 100 minutes of your life watching yet another HK film.

Review

Alan Tam goes decidedly batty in this 2006 comedy, a hark back to the 90s HK-cinema era of feel-good movies. Whatever he was thinking when he signed up for it we’ll never know. Perhaps people have finally hit onto the fact that his concerts are now more disturbing than ever and he’s forgetting more lyrics than ever and he needed some extra income.

Even though that might be a possible hypothesis, that still doesn’t explain why everyone else signed up for the movie as well. Surely Hacken Lee’s music career is on a rise… if he hasn't already scared off all his fans in concerts of him wearing less and less material while his hair holds more and more product. Perhaps we can conclude that wherever Alan ends up, Hacken is bound to follow “Left Alan Right Hacken”-style.

But is it valid to extend this conclusion so far as to say where Hacken goes, Joey Leung Wing Chung will follow? At least Hacken landed an almost normal role (as normal as HK comedy protagonists get anyways) but who spiked Joey’s drink during the contract signing? Or was his career at an all time low after a certain fiasco we won’t delve into and he was desperate for anything. Including appearing in drag as an impossibly efficient wet nurse. And then popping up again in a strangely normal role as a completely different character of a completely different sex in a completely different country, most probably in an attempt to outdo Alan’s 3 and a half roles in the movie.

Of course, this is a review of the movie itself. Laughing at the actors’ inability to make sane career choices is just a bonus.

The movie starts off with Kit (Hacken), a corporate high-flyer, who has a lot on his plate: colleagues who dislike him, a girlfriend who wont believe the entire office is listening to their phone call about their romantic plans to get some action, and a boss who has taken almost too much a fancy to him (Bey Logan memorably touching Hacken too much for comfort). It appears things are about to get better for Kit, with his boss telling him the company is looking for a new CEO: and if Kit can get hitched soon (the company likes stability, and family men are stable), he's going to get the job. But as we know, things must always get worse before they get better. And he's about to go through the worst month of his life.

Kit promptly proposes for the eighth time to his girlfriend Fung, played by an overly animated Hu Jing, who accepts on one condition: that he must meet, and more importantly survive meeting, various members of her eccentric family. Who feels a Meet the Parents vibe coming on?

Simple enough, right? Not if you're watching a HK comedy. The relatives here would put the Focker's to shame, as we find out by first meeting Joey’s cross-dressed 'milk mum', who does exactly what her name describes, and with ample to spare based on the size of her umm… equipment. Living in the same village is Fung's grandmother (cross-dressed by Alan Tam in the first of his 3 and a half roles), complete with crude humour (Hacken gets accosted again by Grandma, Bey Logan style), culminating in a torturous few days spent surviving the advances of Grandma.

Kit's month gets worse as he finds out there are more relatives: Fung's dad (Alan with a wig) and mum (Law Koon Lan), who are grouchy and horny, respectively. Both stop at nothing to make Kit’s stay as uncomfortable as possible. Here, Law Koon Lan does her best Marilyn Monroe impression and Kit is left to attempt to hide in horror. Of course, it all turns out to be an innocent test and Kit once again wins approval of his future father and mother in-laws.

And as if that's not enough for him, there's still a brother in law in Singapore (played by Alan yet again), who runs a herbal medicine business which is competing with Kit's company. So funniness ensues as Kit gets caught up in the middle of a corporate war and tries to hide his identity as company manager from Fung’s brother as well as prevent his associates from sabotaging the family business (and of course his chance to hitch with Fung). Joey appears in Singapore as well, as an employee Fung’s brother, one that appears to do nothing besides standing around swatting flies.

So that’s 3 roles for Alan. Where’s the remaining half I hear you ask? Well that of course would be Fung’s other brother who randomly pops up here and there just to throw in a bit of confusion and “suspense”. Strangely enough, he appears at the very end of the movie to save the day and of course make use of his half-character.

If I were Kit I would've just found another girlfriend by now, but this is a HK feel-good comedy, and so we know that he'll make it through in the end. All we have to do to watch the happy-ever-after is sit through 100 minutes of toilet humour, and cultural references which are surprisingly funny if you do understand them.

The above being said, though, We Are Family is not a complete flop for some redeeming reasons. The formula used to mix We Are Family is tried and tested: take some celebrities, throw them a script with an easy story, sprinkle in as many gags and jokes as you can, and label the film as the feel-good family comedy of the year. The acting is completely overdone, which I hate to admit probably adds to the movie rather than detracting from it. The characters are complete caricatures, the lines are completely predictable yet unmemorable, and the ending is absolutely unbelievable: but the movie makes it work because it refuses to take itself seriously. And so it seems that Alan and Hacken have succeeded again, as they announced in their first concert tour: to 'sing HK happy'...except this time, they've made a movie so silly you're bound to feel better about yourself after watching it (unless you actually had something productive planned for those 100 minutes). But for us, that's good enough.

© Gonzo & peggy jean