Goldbuster (2017)

"The deliveryman has become takeout!"

Sandra Ng directed and starred in the silly ghost story Goldbuster. It’s rare for a woman to have the chance to direct and Sandra acquitted herself nicely with this film about an eclectic group of tenants being forced out of their homes so that the apartments could be demolished by an immoral land developer.

The rundown Prestige Garden Apartments are down to its last seven tenants-two fugitive gangsters, a widower and his son, two bankrupt inventors, and an erotic web cam girl. When they grow tired of being haunted by a ghost, they call in a ghostbuster. With the arrival of bargain basement Ling, the ghostly comedic antics begin in earnest.

The tenants were a mixed bag of odd characters. One of the gangsters, Ming, played by Francis Ng, believed he was a cop and often postured himself like Crockett from Miami Vice. The other gangster, Ren, had a girlfriend who required a bike pump to stay inflated. Wang Bao Jian, an acupuncturist, suffered from the guilt of being unable to save his wife. His son hadn’t spoken since his mother died. Wang didn’t want to leave the building hoping her spirit would come to visit. Ping, the erotic webcam girl, enjoyed living in the nearly empty complex. The ghostly visitations had the added benefit of increasing the visitors to her site. No one in the building knew if the inventors Jin San and Ju Hua were working on their next invention or were in actuality drug dealers. Two of Boss Xu’s men were under orders to dress like ghosts and scare the tenants out of the building. When the brassy swindler Ling walked in she made more objects disappear into her pockets than exorcising ghosts.

Things I learned: 1-People who cheat small money are swindlers, and those who make it big are businessmen. 2. You can go to hell for photoshopping. 3. There’s always room for one more needle in acupuncture.

Sandra Ng created an elaborate swindle comedy involving ghosts, zombies and a hellish underworld. She even threw in a Thriller re-enactment. The comedy in this was over-the-top at times but never devolved into the overt mugging cross-eyed at the camera some comedies relied on. I’m not a huge fan of Hong Kong comedies but I laughed out loud in several places. The glue that held this story together were the tenants and the family they had created from a diverse group of good-hearted weirdos. Goldbuster could be obvious and erratic and lacking in subtlety, but it could also be warm and funny at the same time. Sandra Ng could be proud of her directorial debut, it may not have been eek-tastic but I really hope it wasn’t a dead end for her directorial career.

10/17/23

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