ReviewMama Boy movie review: Kai Ko, Vivian Hsu flirt with an affair in Taiwanese comedy drama by Au Revoir Taipei director Arvin Chen

A son in thrall to his mother struggles to interact with women. When his cousin takes him to a brothel, he can’t perform, but falls for the middle-aged madam

Sara Yu is excellent as domineering matriarch Meiling, but Kai Ko a disappointment as the son, Xiao-hong, who lacks warmth or personality

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Kai Ko in a still from Mama Boy (category IIA; Mandarin), co-starring Vivian Hsu and directed by Arvin Chen.

Published: 4:45pm, 3 Oct 2022

2/5 stars

Overbearing mothers, wayward sons, inarticulate protagonists and inappropriate romantic entanglements all jostle for attention, but do precious little to hold it, in Arvin Chen Chun-lin’s Mama Boy. It marks a disappointing return for the writer-director of Au Revoir Taipei and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Kai Ko Chen-tung, so charismatic in his collaborations with Giddens Ko Ching-teng such as last year’s Till We Meet Again, is an infuriating personality vacuum as Xiao-hong, a 20-something loner who works at a fish store and still lives with his mother.

Displaying as much warmth and personality as the bulbous-eyed goldfish in the tanks at his workplace, he is similarly trapped by the relentless, self-serving attentions of his lonely mother.

Sara Yu Hsiu-chin is admittedly rather excellent as domineering matriarch Meiling, who smothers her boy so completely that he has become incapable of accomplishing anything without her interference and supervision.

She persistently henpecks him into going on dates with the daughters of her colleagues at the local supermarket or friends from her church choir group, only to sabotage them almost immediately with invasive phone calls and interrogatory lines of questioning.