My Cousin is a Ghost
In this Sammo Hung produced comedy, he allows
a few of the very best HK character actors to take this film for a crazy
ride and give the audience a few laughs along the way. It’s all quite silly
and it takes a while for it to start humming, but once it does it becomes
an amusing tale of ghosts and family. This has a very Chinese feel to it
– a large non-nuclear family all living together and loving each other
– even if one of them is a ghost!
It begins with Richard Ng living in London
and going to the park to catch pigeons for his restaurant by luring them
into a basket while a dotty British couple keeps asking themselves “where
did all the pigeons go?” Back at the restaurant Ng gets into a spat with
his cousin Wu Ma,an illegal immigrant, and accidentally informs some immigration
people to this fact. Ma is sent home to HK where he becomes a cook and
his cousins – Kenny Bee, Mang Hoi and Tai Po – are all waiters. The film
has a number of skit like routines such as Ma’s old girlfriend having her
wedding dinner at the restaurant and the cousins thinking he has poisoned
her food and the lengths they go to not to serve the food.
One evening Ng shows up from London telling everyone
he is back with loads of money and wants to start a business in HK. Needless
to say the whole family welcomes him with very open arms! This whole male
family lives together in a small house – oh – and there are two female
ghosts living upstairs! Not that the men know this – the ghosts appear
very human like and no one is the wiser. But the ghosts are getting
lonely for male companionship and begin seducing two of the men – Ng and
Mang Hoi. Ng falls immediately for his ghost (Wong Wan Si) and does a very
funny window washing tango with her.
And to make things just a bit stranger, Kenny
gets a call from his relatives in London telling him that Ng died a week
ago! Ng’s spirit hasn’t realized this small fact yet – but if it does before
the first day of the second week of his death, he will not be able to reincarnate.
Wu Ma tells them this is what is called an “aggrieved ghost”. So the boys
get together and do everything they can to make sure he doesn’t find out.
No appetite? – due to the long trip, no reflection? – mirror, what mirror,
no pulse? - bad diet.
It all starts getting completely wacky when the
female ghosts reveal their true selves – by removing their heads among
other things – but neither Ng nor Mang really seem to mind. The catch is
the men have to be dead to accompany a ghost for eternity. For Ng that
is no problem, but for Mang this is a bit of a hitch. Its all in good fun
– with a few special effects thrown in for good measure.
My rating for this film: 6.0