Review | Say I Do to Me movie review: romantic comedy about social media and relationships from Beyond the Dream director is a high-concept dud

Filmmaker Kiwi Chow showed brilliance in his 2020 film Beyond the Dream, but his new offering with Sabrina Ng and Chan Kin-long is neither interesting nor funny

The film is about an influencer who plans to marry herself, and the chaos that ensues. But infantile acting makes this twee relationship farce hard to watch

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Sabrina Ng as Ping in a still from Say I Do to Me (category IIA, Cantonese), co-starring Chan Kin-long and directed by Kiwi Chow.

Published: 11:15am, 24 Jan 2023

2/5 stars

The best thing that can be said about Kiwi Chow Kwun-wai’s latest film is that it’s nice to see him working again.

In recent years, the director has received acclaim for his 2020 psychodrama Beyond the Dream – considered the best Hong Kong film of that year by this critic – but has also put his career on the line with such politically contentious efforts as the 2015 satire Ten Years, and Revolution of Our Times – a high-profile documentary on the 2019 anti-government protests in the city.

Ironically, Chow, who has seemingly been given free creative reign for his latest movie, could have benefited from tighter curatorial control by his fellow producers; after all, Say I Do to Me does count Chapman To Man-chat, the Taiwan-based Hong Kong comedy veteran, as a major investor.

First-time screen actress Sabrina Ng Ping (of YouTube channel Pomato) plays Ping, a social media influencer whose popularity has skyrocketed since she announced that she’ll stage a “sologamy” – a wedding in which she marries herself – to assert the importance of being true to oneself.

As her plan brings unintended chaos, the film takes us two months back in time to when Ping and her long-time boyfriend, Dickson (Chan Kin-long, director of Hand Rolled Cigarette), were still struggling to attract viewers to their clown-themed channel. Their fortunes change when the pair fake their break-up, and one thing leads to another.

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