All's Well, Ends Well
Reviewed by YTSL
What a stellar cast this Chinese New Year production
boasts! With a list headed by Stephen Chow (Hong Kong's foremost
funny man), Maggie Cheung (who does excel at comedy as well as drama and
falling down stairs), Leslie Cheung (a truly multi-talented performer),
Sandra Ng (another versatile Hong Kong actress), Raymond Wong (who also
co-directed this effort) and Teresa Mo (someone I would like to see more
of; who also appeared in John Woo's last Hong Kong work), it actually is
small wonder that this zany movie was the second -- only to "Justice, My
Foot!" -- highest grossing film at the Hong Kong Box Office(s) in 1992;
drawing more crowds and financially outperforming such esteemed works as
"Swordsman II" (8th on that year's list), "Police Story III: Supercop"
(10th), "Dragon Inn" (16th), "Once Upon a Time in China" I and II (17th
and 12th respectively), and "Hard Boiled" (18th).
In ALL'S WELL, ENDS WELL: Stephen Chow's
Foon Foon is a womanizing deejay, one of whose attempted conquests is a
Hollywood movie-mad Miss Hollyok (played by Maggie Cheung, whose first
appearance is in a pointy metal bra Madonna get-up!); Raymond Wong takes
on the role of a man who treats his wife (regardless of what form she comes
in -- that of Sandra Ng or another actress whose name I do not know) like
a servant, preferring to have fun with his mistress (ditto); while Leslie
Cheung is the nice girlish boy-man who dotes on his ugly duckling sister-in-law
(Ng) and chastises his brothers (Chow and Wong) for their general ill-treatment
of women but very much dislikes a (distant?) female relative of his played
by the usually perky Teresa Mo. Since all three brothers continue
to live in the same house with their parents (a not unusual situation among
East Asians), characters meet and stories do intermingle somewhat.
In a nutshell: This Clifton Ko- and Raymond
Wong-helmed work is a prime example of those thoroughly eager-to-please
-- sometimes to the point of surreal ridiculousness (cf. "The Eagle Shooting
Heroes"!) – efforts that seems to characterize Chinese New Year offerings
from the Hong Kong movie world. If you are the kind of person who
is happy to star-gaze, and to watch people happily acting silly, then this
extremely light-hearted movie will suit you fine. Another factor
in this lightweight production's favor is that while its plot is quite
lacking (the film often feels like a series of loose sketches), it truly
is gag-filled. But IMHO, the true gauge(s) of how you will respond
to ALL'S WELL, ENDS WELL may well lie in whether you find the following
-- which REALLY do all take place in this film -- to be hysterically funny
or amusing (or just plain weird):
Scenes of a temporarily insane Stephen Chow being
in love with – and (consequently?) drinking his own urine from -- his bedpan...Chow
and Maggie Cheung twice (thrice? I must confess that my mind was
so boggled by then that I might have forgotten to count!) performing the
Double Inverted Eiffel Tower Kissing Technique...Miss Hollyok and Foon
Foon attempting to live -- as well as act -- out scenes from such Hollywood
productions as "Ghost", "Pretty Woman" and "Misery"...a butch Teresa Mo
clashing with -- at one point, using a baseball bat on – and threatening
to rape the father of a truly effeminate-acting (flower-arranging class
teaching, lantern weaving!) Leslie Cheung...and Sandra Ng playing and transforming
from Raymond Wong's homely, parsimonious, Karaoke-croaking wife into an
attractive club girl.
My own feeling is that this movie has both inspired
but also lame moments. It also is undoubtedly so that while ALL'S
WELL, ENDS WELL is enjoyable enough, most -- if not all -- of the individuals
involved have done quite a few better things. As such, I must admit
to being somewhat disappointed that this major box office success -- which
has gone on to spawn at least two similarly titled semi-sequels -- is as
uneven as it generally is, even while acknowledging that there were times
when it not unpleasantly made me more feel more light-headed than I have
been for a while...
My rating for the film: 7.
