FILM (1982)

Plain Jane to the Rescue Josephine Siao Fong-fong, Ricky Hui Koon-ying, Michael Lee Ming-yeung, Charlie Cho Cha-lei Director: John Woo Yu-sum

Though far from being a comedy classic, the screwball antics of bespectacled bungler Jenny Lam Ah-chun is well worth revisiting both for the personnel involved and for the unexpected relevancy of the mayhem unleashed on screen.

The movie unites director John Woo and actress Josephine Siao, who are among the few Hong Kong film personalities whose fame has not faded in the nearly three decades since Plain Jane came to the rescue. Siao, though long retired from acting, was recently selected the city's most trusted individual, and Woo is still a major player on the world stage in the arena of action spectacles. That he is not an auteur known for his sense of humour is given credence by the uneven nature of this farce where anything goes.

The script, co-written by Woo and Lau Chan-wang, is a hodgepodge of at-times tangentially related skits centring on a homely young woman who blunders from job to job. The situations bounce from the hilariously silly to the merely silly, but all are rescued by Siao's effervescence. In this she is aided by character actors Ricky Hui (right, with Siao) and Michael Lee, who deftly fill the clumsy shoes of the two men in Jenny's life. The former is platonic boyfriend Tsang Fei-fang, as socially inept as his lady love. The latter is an uncouth oldster whose son, Mr Sand (Charlie Cho Cha-lei), inexplicably hopes to be changed under Jenny's tutelage into Eliza Doolittle's Cantonese uncle. This leads to lessons in dance, speech and dining, but since Jenny is no Henry Higgins, the shenanigans come across as soggy as the rain in Spain.

By 1982, Siao had Jenny down to a tee, having essayed the lass in a TV series and the features Lam Ah Chun (1978) and Lam Ah Chun Blunders Again (1979).

What Woo injects, in an only partially successful attempt to combine two genres, is a huge dose of action that endows the film with a 'wow' factor overshadowing its comedic qualities. Most impressive is the finale in the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, a truly over-the-top affair concerning a hostage-taking arsonist and capped by an impromptu concert by Roman Tam. The singer's rare big-screen appearance, one of just a handful during his entertainment career, is matched by the director's cameo parodying himself as a cinematic god, albeit of the jobless variety.