Review of Wu Yen

I've enjoyed Anita Mui, Sammi Cheng, and Cecilia Cheung in other films, but this is a far-from-typical Hong Kong comedy. Its staged like a bad play, but if you're unfamiliar with the source material it parodies, that falls flat. Slapstick is overdone until it becomes strident, and the actors all overact to the point of being obnoxious, particularly Anita Mui. "Zany" is too kind a description for this, I'd say. There's an empty, charmless, forced mania that suffuses the film, desperately grabbing for your attention but denying the characters any depth, chemistry, or rhythm and testing your patience. I made it to the end, but what you see in the first 15 minutes is what you get throughout.