Writer: Tammy Ang

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Watch this if you liked: "72 Tenants Of Prosperity", "All's Well, End's Well"

"Here Comes Fortune" is about the God of Fortune coming down from heaven to spread some love and wealth to humans in need. The movie is developed by talking about stories which took place in three cities: Shenyang, where a kind-hearted teacher is willing to give up a billion dollars in order to save her adopted daughter; Shanghai, love story about 533, a female God of Fortune falling in love with a blind pianist; and Beijing, where an ugly duckling story of Xu Jie, the boring introverted office lady. All stories carry the happiness-over-materialism message.

Even at the very start, a jolly Chinese New Year feel is delivered with the deities in Heaven singing festive songs. The scene is shot as if they are making Chinese New Year MTV videos! Remember Mengke Bateer as the stinky tofu vendor in "Bodyguards And Assassins"? If you look closely, you would see him appearing as the man banging the gong at the start and at the end of the movie. Alan Tam played the God of Fortune in "Kung Hei Fat Choy" 24 years ago and now he does it again. In an interview, he laughed and said that he was just a lowly money god with little respect then but now he has been promoted to become the leader of all the Gods of Fortune. With Miriam Yeung as the shy office lady, you can expect to see more of her well known performances in comedy films as a naive, silly and clumsy girl. This may be their first screen pairing but there is good chemistry between them.

The dialogue are quite 'mou lei tou' (makes no sense), where a tech-savvy era such as ours demands that the gods in Heaven also use special gadgets to accomplish their mission of spreading love and wealth among earthlings. These gadgets range from PDAs to memory-erasing sticks that look like dildos! However, there are also some touching moments, especially in the second story about the the blind pianist played by Chang Chen, who reportedly went to the school for the blind in Taiwan for more than a month to prepare for his role. The cinematography here is also more outstanding than the rest, so do take note of the sunrise scene of Shanghai. Thumbs up for this particular shot!

If we were to complain, this movie does have yet another ridiculous product placement scene (just like the other New Year release, "72 Tenants Of Prosperity) at the end. If seeing Alan Tam with a packet of fruit juice in his hands all the time isn't enough, you also get a bewildering salesperson looking straight into the camera and promoting the juice as a useful to fight against H1N1 flu!

All in all, "Here Comes Fortune" is still an auspiciously packaged movie that entertains, although it has a more Mainland China feel than Hong Kong.

Cinema Online, 12 February 2010