All U Need Is Love
总是有爱在隔离
Hong Kong, 2021, colour, 2.35:1, 95 mins.
Director: Gu Dezhao 谷德昭 [Vincent Kok].
Associate directors: Guo Zijian 郭子健 [Derek Kwok], Chen Qingjia 陈庆嘉 [Chan Hing-kai].
Rating: 5/10.
Amusing (but soggy) pandemic comedy, set in a quarantined hotel, is all very familiar Hong Kong stuff.
STORY
Hong Kong, the present day. While his wife is trapped in Thailand because of a pandemic, Ren Yinjiu (Liang Jiahui) is smuggled out of the house he hasn’t been allowed to leave for 10 years by a group of friends posing as members of the Epidemic Task Force. Its leader is Ren Yinjiu’s old pal, Guo Tianyou (Zeng Zhiwei), who books him – under the pretence he’s been quarantined – into the five-star Hong Kong Grande Hotel 格尼大酒店 so they can have some fun before they’re too old. The operation is codenamed Back to My Twenties 我要重返二十岁. However, that afternoon a real Epidemic Task Force locks the hotel down for 14 days, trapping not only Ren Yingjiu and Guo Tianyou & Co. but all other people there. They include a young couple, Huang Dahao (Lu Yong) and Zhu Liying (Su Lishan), trying out the menu for their forthcoming wedding banquet; two rival gangsters, Speed (Zhang Zhilin) and Diesel (Zhang Jicong), in the middle of doing business in the sauna; and a single mother, Mango (Xue Kaiqi), whom the hotel manager (Chen Jiale) has just sacked but is now forced to rehire on an increased salary. After lecturing all the guests on solidarity, and offering them free food, the hotel’s owner (Xu Guanwen) tried his best to escape, in various schemes organised by his security chief (Qian Jiale), who happens to be his jealous younger brother and is also planning to kill him. In the basement car park the two gangsters and their men also try to cheat each other and escape; the two leaders fail and end up booked into the same double room. Meanwhile, Ren Yinjiu is impatient to meet Rouge, an old girlfriend who’s now divorced and back in Hong Kong; but she calls and says it’s too dangerous to meet as they’re both in the high-risk group. Speed and Diesel try to get along in the same room and without their men to pander to their needs. Cooped up in their room, Huang Dahao and Zhu Liying start arguing even before they’re married. Ren Yinjiu gets anxious to meet a woman, so Guo Tianyou organises a blind date. Guo Tianyou himself is harried by his wife (Yu An’an) over the phone. And then, as the pandemic worsens, the hotel is forced to introduce restrictions like masks and social distancing.
REVIEW
A motley group of staff and guests is trapped together when a hotel goes into quarantine lockdown in Hong Kong comedy All U Need Is Love 总是有爱在隔离, another in the occasional series when the territory’s entertainment industry rallies round in a public show of solidarity over some event or general nervousness. It’s all very familiar stuff, with old-style comedy turns, masses of cameos and Hong Kong in-jokes, plenty of civic lecturing underneath the humour, and a soggy ending that tells us that life is really all about luuurve and friendship. Prime movers behind the project were actors Gu Tianle 古天乐 [Louis Koo] and Zeng Zhiwei 曾志伟 [Eric Tsang], with the final budget being HK$30 million. Shot by three units during May-Jun 2020 but then held up during postproduction, it was finally released almost a year later, taking a mere HK$490,000 on its first weekend; in the Mainland it was released online by iQiyi in a 79-minute version 12 days later.
When it comes to Hong Kong stereotypes not much has changed in 20-odd years, and to prove it Zeng and fellow veteran Liang Jiahui 梁家辉 [Tony Leung Ka-fai] resurrect their characters from Men Suddenly in Black 大丈夫 (2003) of two ageing lotharios trying to have fun while their domineering wives are away. The other main storylines range from the equally predictable (warring gangsters trapped in a double room; a two-faced hotel owner trying to escape the lockdown) to thinly developed relationship stories (two about-to-be-weds start quarrelling; the hotel manager falls for a staffer he just sacked). It’s all lightly amusing, with plenty of cutting between the main stories, and regular sequences of room-checks to squeeze in lots more cameos; but halfway through it starts to lose its comic energy and become a familiar Hong Kong mix of the half-serious and half-soppy, underlined with preachy reminders to wear masks and engage in social distancing. The music predictably mirrors the shift in tone.
Zhang Zhilin 张智霖 [Julian Cheung] and Zhang Jicong 张继聪 get as much mileage as possible out of the warring-gangsters thread, though it’s pretty overworked by the end. The biggest chuckles are mostly thanks to the old-timers, who’ve been doing this kind of thing for donkey’s years: Zeng and Liang as the two men on the lam; Yu An’an 余安安 [Candice Yu] as the former’s bossy wife; Xu Guanwen 许冠文 [Michael Hui] as the pompous hotel owner; Zhang Daming 张达明 as the future bride’s scruffy father. As the young manager and the re-hired staffer, Chen Jiale 陈家乐 and actress-singer Xue Kaiqi 薛凯琪 [Fiona Sit] are okay without being anything special; ditto rapper-actor Lu Yong 陆永 as the bridegroom-to-be. Technically the film is smooth, with three experienced hands at the helm.
The film’s credit titles are unique. The presenting companies – 10 of the territory’s biggest – and their chief executives are identified at the start, as usual; but that’s followed by just a list of 33 teams (“script team”, “directing team” etc.) with no names attached, and a collective credit of “a group of film-makers who ardently love Hong Kong” 一群热爱香港的电影工作者. The end titles simply list 177 names (in stroke order) with no hint of who’s done what – though the music industry seems immune to the idea of collectivity as songs are credited in the traditional way. (The credits listed below have been assembled from various sources.) The film’s Chinese title means “There’s Always Love in Quarantine”.
CREDITS
Presented by China Star Movie (HK), Edko Films (HK), Emperor Film Production (HK), Mandarin Motion Pictures (HK), Media Asia Film Production (HK), Mei Ah Film Production (HK), One Cool Film Production (HK), Shaw Brothers Pictures International (HK), Sun Entertainment Culture (HK), Universe Films Distribution (HK).
Script: Gu Dezhao [Vincent Kok]. Theme song: Lu Guanting [Lowell Lo] (music), Tang Shuchen (lyrics).
Cast: Zeng Zhiwei [Eric Tsang] (Guo Tianyou), Liang Jiahui [Tony Leung Ka-fai] (Ren Yinjiu), Zhang Zhilin [Julian Cheung] (Lei Gong/Speed), Zhang Jicong (Zi You/Diesel), Gu Tianle [Louis Koo] (interrogator), Wu Zhenyu [Francis Ng] (second interrogatee), Lin Jiadong [Gordon Lam) (third interrogatee), Fang Lishen [Alex Fong Lik-sun] (Wang Jinhui, first interrogatee, arrested at airport), Jiang Haowen [Philip Keung] (busy businessman in foyer), Chen Jiale (Chen Danni/Danny, hotel manager), Cai Jie (Mrs. Xu, OL), Xue Kaiqi [Fiona Sit] (Mangguo/Mango), Lu Yong (Huang Dahao/William, bridegroom-to-be), Su Lishan (Zhu Liying/Zhuzhu/Judy, bride-to-be), Zheng Zeshi [Kent Cheng] (Huang Dahao’s father), Han Mali (Huang Dahao’s mother), Zhang Daming (Zhu Liying’s father), Xu Guanwen [Michael Hui] (Li/Tommy, hotel owner), Qian Jiale [Chin Ka-lok] (security head/Li’s younger brother), Feng Mianheng (hotel owner’s assistant), Peng Jingci (Zhao Zilong/Robinson, airforce veteran), Wang Kaiwei [Wang Hexi] (Navy SEAL veteran), Lu Huiguang [Ken Lo] (army veteran), Li Canchen [Sam Lee] (head security guard), Zhou Xiuna [Chrissie Chau] (female guest exercising in room), Yuan Qiu (female guest with hair in rollers), Bai Zhi [Ling Zhihao] (male guest with bloody chopper), Che Wanwan (complaining female guest), Luo Lan (old female room cleaner), Lin Dexin (male room cleaner), Liu Xinyou [Annie Liu] (Fenhong/Pinky, Ren Yinjiu’s supposed date), Lin Zhaoxia (Ren Yinjiu’s actual date), Zhang Guoqiang (Chinese medicine doctor), Ju Ziqiao (nurse), Yu An’an [Candice Yu] (Tian’s wife), Deng Yueping (Michiko, Japanese AV actress), Gregory Charles Rivers (Epidemic Task Force supervisor), Li Jingyun (hotel chef), Cheng Long [Jackie Chan] (somersaulting fighter), Huang Baiming [Raymond Wong], He Yuandong (video congratulators), Lin Shengbin (van driver), Zhang Xueyou [Jacky Cheung], Liu Dahua [Andy Lau], Li Keqin, Rong Zu’er [Joey Yung], Su Yongkang, Liang Hanwen, Zhou Baihao, Xue Kaiqi [Fiona Sit], Zheng Xinyi [Joyce Cheng], Deng Lixin [Stephy Tang], Deng Rong, Lian Shiya, Wu Weinan, Grasshopper (singers), Zhang Dalun, Zhang Wenci, Wu Zhaoxuan, Wu Yongshi.
Release: Hong Kong, 22 Apr 2021.