Get Reel | Film review: Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 is unnecessary and contrived
His heart is not in it. That's the feeling one gets about Johnnie To Kei-fung when viewing Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, the filmmaker's follow-up to his and Wai Ka-fai's engaging 2011 romantic comedy about a love triangle involving a playboy broker (Louis Koo Tin-lok), a female financial analyst (Gao Yuanyuan) and an unassuming architect (Daniel Wu Yin-cho).
Starring: Louis Koo Tin-lok, Miriam Yeung Chin-wah, Gao Yuanyuan, Vic Chou Yu-min
Director: Johnnie To Kei-fung
Category: IIA (Cantonese, Putonghua, English and French)
His heart is not in it. That's the feeling one gets about Johnnie To Kei-fung when viewing Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, the filmmaker's follow-up to his and Wai Ka-fai's engaging 2011 romantic comedy about a love triangle involving a playboy broker (Louis Koo Tin-lok), a female financial analyst (Gao Yuanyuan) and an unassuming architect (Daniel Wu Yin-cho).
More over-the-top silly and indulgent than truly funny and charming, the film picks up close to where the first Don't Go Breaking My Heart left off, with fallout from 2012's Hurricane Sandy being incorporated into the story, and many plot elements — including a psychic octopus that references both the 2010 World Cup Finals' Paul the Octopus and a pet frog from the first film — giving a sense that its filmmakers are more into looking back than breaking new ground.
Inexplicably, the first film's arguably most winning character, Wu's Qihong, is shunted to the side — or, rather, Suzhou — for much of this sequel. But rather than focus on Shen-ran (Koo) and Zixin (Gao), the sequel adds two members from the top 1 per cent of society to the farcical mix in the Ferrari-driving "Goddess of Stocks" Yang Yang-yang (Miriam Yeung Chin-wah) and luxury yacht-owning designer Paul (Vic Chou Yu-min).
Also hard to fathom is why these characters appear so half-hearted in their romantic commitments and pursuits. For example, you'd think that Zixin would have already settled with the steady Qihong and that the pair would be happily married. Instead, they've postponed their wedding until the construction of a building on which he's working, leaving an engaged but still legally single woman on the open market in Hong Kong.