Review | The Grand Grandmaster film review: scattershot martial arts comedy sees Dayo Wong fight Annie Liu
- Wong has yet to fully translate his undoubted comedic skills from stage to big screen. This film has its funny moments, but its plot stretches credulity too far
- The director plays a supposed martial arts master who is floored by a boxer (Liu), then tries to wriggle out of a rematch, before they fall in love
2.5/5 stars
Dayo Wong Tze-wah is arguably the greatest stand-up comedian in the Cantonese-speaking world. But so far he has struggled to transfer his sharp wit and biting humour to the big screen. Buoyed by the commercial success of Agent Mr Chan , a 2018 film in which he had a leading role, he is once again going all in for a share of the Hong Kong box office this Lunar New Year.
The Grand Grandmaster, directed and co-written by Wong (and Chung Kai-cheong) and starring him in the title role, has been declared by anti-government protesters to be their holiday movie of choice. Wong endeared himself to them by explaining in a social media post two weeks ago that he had to sell an apartment to fund the film’s shooting – so he could make it a Hong Kong-only production and bypass China’s censors.
Wong’s film will surely sell a whole lot more tickets than the only other film he has directed, 2002’s Fighting to Survive – still one of the most notorious box office bombs in Hong Kong cinema history. However, The Grand Grandmaster may disappoint viewers looking for the provocative edge that prompted Wong to shun the Chinese co-production model.
This scattershot comedy tells the story of Ma Fei-lung (Wong), the 19th-generation practitioner of Ma Ka Thunder style, a (fictional) Chinese martial arts tradition invented some 800 years ago. Ma has turned his ancestors’ teachings into a profitable school franchise and even a broad range of merchandise – that is, until he gets flattened in seconds by a beautiful stranger in a public encounter.
His conqueror turns out to be Chan Tsang (Annie Liu Xin-you), a former boxing champion who mysteriously quit the sport after losing for the first time in her 41st match. Forced by media pressure to agree to a rematch, Ma soon discovers that his most trusted students have always been faking it, and that he is himself hopelessly weak in actual combat. An attempt to fix the rematch with Chan disgusts her.
Although the Chinese and English titles of the film both make reference to Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster (2013), Dayo Wong’s half-hearted parody doesn’t share much with its predecessor beyond the premise of two fierce martial arts rivals falling in love against the odds. Unlike the earlier film, though, The Grand Grandmaster’s segue into romance feels both abrupt and utterly incredible.
Ma’s efforts to get out of the mess by paying off Chan or enlisting her disgruntled father (Hui Siu-hung) as fighting coach show repeatedly how pathetic he is. Yet in this male fantasy, the audience is somehow expected to accept that Chan will immediately fall in love with Ma after discovering that he is being abandoned by a flighty and promiscuous wife (Catherine Chau Ka-yee).
The Grand Grandmaster is at its wittiest when it satirises Hong Kong society, with its easily moulded opinions, and mercilessly mocks traditional Chinese martial arts styles. The film’s repeated allusion to Bruce Lee’s “Be water” philosophy – which incidentally, also features in another new release, Enter the Fat Dragon – suggests Wong might have bigger ideas in mind when he conceived the story.
Still, there’s no denying that The Grand Grandmaster is a mediocre attempt at comedy at best. If anything, Wong should thank his on-screen partner Liu for delivering such an impressively physical performance – and not just when she’s getting intimate with him. By putting flesh on her boxer/lover character that was not necessarily there on paper, Liu is the real star of the show.
