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Let's Go!

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Starring: Juno Mak Chun-lung, Stephy Tang Lai-yan, Gordon Lam Ka-tung
Director: Wong Ching-po
Category: IIB (Cantonese)

Inspired by cartoons and memories of 1980s after-school TV viewing, this live-action comedy-drama is in dire need of a team of superhero scriptwriters to bring its scattered ideas into focus.

The high concepts bandied about by director Wong Ching-po certainly have the potential to entertain, and occasionally do, but the underlying premise of misfit youths harnessing their inner powers to fight dastardly criminals is needlessly obscured by a weak plot and poorly defined characters. Let's Go! has the disjointed feel of stapled-together episodes related chiefly by the presence of morose waiter Siu Sheung (Juno Mak Chun-lung, below, who also co-produced the film).

Flashbacks reveal his childhood love of the 1980s Japanese cartoon Space Emperor God Sigma, and the family tragedy that changed his life at the age of eight, along with his views on battling for justice.

Now a taciturn adult, Siu Sheung and his kung fu skills fuel the fight-for-justice league fantasies of oddball pal Big Bird (Wen Chao). It's a storyline that cries out for over-the-top treatment but is undercut by the filmmakers' inability to make the pair's friendship believable.

Big Bird is soon dropped, though, for another subplot in which Siu Sheung joins tough guy Kwong Shing (Gordon Lam Ka-tung) and a squad of bodyguards protecting tycoon gangster Hon Yu (veteran kung fu star Jimmy Wang Yu). Romance unconvincingly enters the picture via the introduction of sassy shoplifter-cum-rocker Annie (Stephy Tang Lai-yan).

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