Perfect Exchange, with Tony Leung Ka-fai, Andy Lau Tak-wah, Lee Yuen-wah, Liu Kai-chi, and Kristy Chung Lai-tai. Directed by Wong Jing. On Golden Harvest circuit. A Confucius Family [Queli Renjia], with Zhu Xu, Zhao Erkang, Zhang Wenrong, and Ning Li. Directed by Wu Yigong. In Mandarin with Chinese subtitles. On Southern circuit. IT'S no wonder that the Hong Kong film industry is in a severe state of crisis, what with schlock comedies like Perfect Exchange. One of the ''biggest'' pictures of the autumn season, with two of Hong Kong's biggest stars, the slipshod production is substandard even by Wong Jing's standards. It's one of those plots that defies description because it never makes any sense. But I'll give it a try. Mandy (Andy Lau) is a gambling con artist who tricks a vicious gangster, Joe (Wan Chi-keung). Joe takes Mandy's best friend (Liu Kai-chi) and girlfriend, Lily (Kristy Chung), hostage to force the gambler to go to jail on an undercover mission: to locate billions of dollars hidden by Joe's former father-in-law (Kwan Hoi-san), whom the mobster has framed for murder. Meanwhile, it develops that another gambler, Chung Cho-hung (Tony Leung), is actually a prison guard who proceeds to wreck havoc on Mandy's life. Is that clear? Of course, as with most Wong Jing movies, this is less a comedy than a smorgasbord with a little bit of everything: gambling picture, action film, drama, crazy farce. And like many buffet dinners, the various courses are mass-produced withlittle regard for freshness or quality. The picture lacks a shred of continuity and human feeling. In the midst of the ''hilarity'', for instance, Liu's leg is painfully broken by a thug while Lily is stabbed in the thigh. In another comedy scene, Mandy discovers his best friend's corpse in a closet. Then it's a fast cut back to the sexual antics of Cho-hung and the gangster's mistress. The level of humour similarly defies description. Prison guard Cho-hung shoves a probe up one muscular convict's rectum, upon which the body-builder emits a powdery yellow substance accompanied by the appropriate sound effects. There are a lot of juvenile locker room-style jokes about the male organ - prisoners comparing sizes; or Cho-hung's efforts to master the ''revolving'' technique taught him by Mandy. These moments may be incredible from an ''I can't believe they're doing this'' standpoint, but theyhardly make Perfect Exchange an enjoyable movie-going experience. Equally incredible is the fact that major stars like Andy Lau and Tony Leung continue to allow themselves to appear in pictures like this. Cantonese movies are a star-driven product, and unless the stars become more selective in their choice of projects,the whole business is headed for extinction. THERE are no stars to speak of in A Confucius Family, a solidly-constructed Shanghai Film Studio production that might have benefitted from a less heavy-handed approach. Director Wu Yigong, now head of the Shanghai Film Bureau, soberly depicts the familial conflicts within an extended Chinese family, the Kongs. Five generations gather together for the great-grandfather's 90th birthday, bringing to the fore the long-festering feelings of guilt and resentment between 50-year-old Kong Dexian (Zhao Erkang), his estranged father, Kong Lingtan (Zhu Xu, who played the opera singer in The True Hearted ), and twentysomething son, Kong Weiben (Ning Li). They are direct descendants of Kong Fuzi, or Confucius, and reside in the sage's home town of Qufu, Shandong Province. But Qufu in the 1990s is undergoing social changes that would have been unthinkable in Confucius' time, 75 generations ago. The young Weiben, a teacher with an infant son, dreams of quitting his job to drive a taxi and thus earn enough money to study overseas. When Papa objects, Weiben seeks grandpa's support - not a wise move, since the two elder Kongs have barely spoken to each other inthe half century since Lingtan abandoned his wife and baby to settle with another woman in Beijing. A Confucius Family has much to say about family relationships in a China in transition. But it does so in a rather old-fashioned, pedantic manner that is reinforced by the obviously studio-bound nature of the production. Despite some effective on-location shooting in Shandong, the bulk of the film takes place at the family home, whose interior rooms and exterior courtyard is clearly a studio set. The lighting quality and painted backdrops, as well as the timbre of the synch-sound dialogue, give the picture an artificial quality that goes against its realistic subject matter. The script, credited to four writers, is sturdily-fabricated but contains barely a hint of wit or subtlety. Take, for example, the ''novelty'' of a Mandarin-speaking American who visits the Kong home. Annie is a Confucian scholar, and her presence in themovie is evidently to illustrate that while the younger generation has a mania for all things Western, traditional Chinese values are still worth cherishing. At one point, Annie even exclaims to Weiben: ''Why would you ever want to leave China?'' Outside of this film, one would be hard-pressed to find a foreign student in the People's Republic who would ask such a question.
