Starring: Tian Yuan, Elanne Kong Yeuk-lam, Jim Yan Chi-hong, Donald Tong Kim-hong
Director: Barbara Wong Chun-chun
Despite a rather forced trendiness throughout, Happy Funeral - director Barbara Wong Chun-chun's loose sequel to her 2003 film, Truth Or Dare: 6th Floor Rear Flat - manages to capture the spirit of a segment of today's youth through a good ear for dialogue and the ability to get quirky performances out of her cast of relatively new faces.
Set in a ramshackle sixth-floor apartment, the film revolves around Bonbon (Donald Tong of comedy duo I Love You Boyz), an aspiring director stuck in a thankless TV job; Pang (Jim Yan of I Love You Boyz), whose job remains a mystery; and C Kwan and 6 Wing (Cheng Sze-kwan and Luk Wing-kuen, far right, of rap group FAMA), fast-talking cronies with no visible means of support.
The flat's two female occupants are would-be singer Kay (Tian Yuan, above centre) and nominal freelance journalist Gi (Elanne Kong, left). The vignette in which she 'interviews' Raymond Wong Pak-ming is one of the film's comic highlights, and a primer on what not to do as a reporter.
The film begins with the friends dreaming big, drinking big and doing little. Their brainstorm of revolutionising the funeral market by staging happy memorials attracts the interest of a mortuary mogul (Eric Tsang Chi-wai), but the group's utter immaturity stymies their business plans. It takes a calamity befalling beloved landlady Suzy Wong (Candy Hau Woon-ling) to serve as a catalyst for these young people to implausibly get their act together.