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The Trouble-Makers
Year: 2003 "It's time for your sponge bath."
Terence Yin and Maggie Q
Director: Aman Cheung Man
Cast: Maggie Q, Terence Yin, Sam Lee Chan-Sam, Lam Suet, Emotion Cheung Kam-Ching, Asuka Higuchi,Leila Tong Ling
The Skinny: Shot-on-video comedy that's more cloying than a Care Bears movie marathon. You can try watching this if you find Maggie Q incredibly attractive, but it may not be worth the loss to your self-respect.
 
Review
by Kozo:

Shot-on-video HK Cinema takes another bullet thanks to The Trouble-Makers, yet another quickie product from those cheap bastards at B&S Films. Terence Yin stars as Szeto, who rents a room in a Sai Kung home from landowner Lam Suet. His new roommate is the comely Clary (Maggie Q), who can't find a job and offers to be Szeto's housekeeper, cook, etc. Szeto agrees because Clary is totally hot, and because he's one of those insanely nice guys that could never exist in the real world. Soon Clary is causing all sorts of trouble: sleepwalking, torturing Szeto at night with a vacuum cleaner, and acting possessed by spirits. Szeto is freaked, but soon comes to suspect that it all might be a scam by his landlord to swindle him out of his security deposit. He (and best pal Sam Lee) attempt to turn the tables, but things spiral out of control, leaving Clary in a state of emotional and physical shock. What follows is a weak parody of Three: Going Home, where Terence Yin attempts to nurse a wheelchair-bound Maggie Q back to health. Presumably, this is all supposed to be touching.

The Trouble-Makers was brought to you by Aman Cheung, who once upon a time made cheap and cheesy exploitation with Wong Jing. Now, he simply makes cheap crap with B&S Films. Finding something to truly recommend about The Trouble-Makers would be like justifying the career of Carrot Top; you could try, but after awhile you'd just be kidding yourself. The script is filled with boring exposition, and the plot is so full of holes that it defies description. The characters engage in an escalating series of con games, but the results are hardly inspired or even entertaining. Adding to that is the acting, which is just awful. Terence Yin is effective in smarmy supporting roles, but as a nice-guy leading man he's bland and emotionally wooden. Maggie Q is equally wooden and obviously dubbed, and possesses zero star quality. She looks fine, but as a professional model, that's to be expected. And Sam Lee and Lam Suet, two of HK's most welcome supporting actors, aren't particularly engaging either. A fly crawling on your wall might generate more excitement.

If anything could be said about The Trouble-Makers, it would be that it's not as bad as Aman Cheung's Summer Dream. That shot-on-video travesty was insultingly terrible. The Trouble-Makers is just terrible and mildly annoying. Judging from the quality of most direct-to-video HK features, it seems that the bar for passable filmmaking has been set alarmingly low. If one were to judge all video features with such reduced expectations, then perhaps good things could be said about some of them. Zero creativity and filmmaking craft would be expected when watching these flicks, and awards could be handed out for "Video Movie that Sucked the Least." Sadly, The Trouble-Makers would never be in the running for that award. (Kozo 2003)

 
Availability: DVD (Hong Kong)
Region 0 NTSC
Modern Audio
Shot on Video
Widescreen
Cantonese and Mandarin Language Tracks
English and Chinese Subtitles

image courtesy of Modern Audio

   
 
 
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