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Ongoing 5/20
Broken Trust
0 people found this review helpful
3 days ago
5 of 20 episodes seen
Ongoing 0
Overall 8.5
Story 8.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
This review may contain spoilers

I love watching Kent Cheng

This is a comedy drama and I just love watching Kent Cheng in action. He has always been great to watch act, and here in this role he is witty, smart, experienced and really had great comedic timing. He stars as a wealthy business man that has a highly dysfunctional family with a son that won’t listen to him, a girlfriend who he won’t marry and a daughter who hides stuff from him. One of the best scenes was when he finds his daughter, played by Kelly Fu, who was living in poverty in Hong Kong because she divorced her cheating husband - a husband Kent forced in her - and when Kent finds out he sarcastically replied, “Such a small problem and you never told me?” Just pure gold!

Kent’s quips are also on point, just so sharp and with no hesitation and he doesn’t filter his emotions either. Watching his interaction with each member of the cast is just so funny, especially with Edwin Siu and Archie Sin.

The main driving plot so far is that Kent was abducted and was threatened by his kidnappers to give them money or else. They even threw in a line “someone in your family made us do this”, to which Kent grew suspicious of everybody in his inner circle. Episode 5 brings this plot point to a “conclusion” but Kent is not convinced so this is still the main drive of the plot.

So far a very entertaining drama. I can’t wait for more episodes next week!

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Completed
Sinister Beings Season 2
1 people found this review helpful
Apr 3, 2024
30 of 30 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 7.5
Story 7.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 7.0
This review may contain spoilers

An explosive start, this is great!

This sequel drama continues directly from the last drama and it kicks off with a lot of action and awesome stunts! If you wondered where all the budget from “In Bed With A Stranger” went, it all went here to this drama, and you can tell because of all the action and special effects used here.

I have watched up to episode 3 and Ruco Chan is still separated from Rosina Lin, and you can see how pathetic he was trying to get her back. I am calling this now, Rosina is going to start dating this Professor played by Alex Fong later, and then eventually Alex Fong is revealed to have some dark background and connection to the dark web and terrorism so she breaks up with Alex Fong and gets back with Ruco. This is the typical TVB formula so I am calling it now. I really hope Rosina doesn’t stay with Alex because they are not a good match as a couple.

For now, all good!

Episode 9: so far so good but this episode brought in something that had me laughing so hard! The police go into a home and take somebody there down to the station. While at the home, they spot a triangular computer on the floor with all these RGB fans and you can see it is air cooled with what I think was a Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212. While interviewing the suspect for some possible cybercrime, Terence Tung said something that made me laugh so hard. He says to the suspect, “We spotted in your home a PC that appeared to be as fast and as powerful as the police supercomputer.” I’m sorry but has anybody on the TVB production team ever seen a supercomputer? They are a huge mammoth cluster of racks that require a huge datacenter to set up and have running with huge power demands. And TVB expects us to believe something like that, which a Police force should have, was replicated in a single tiny PC case with a single CPU and powered by a single PSU? I know they say PCs run faster with more RGB lights but come on! Maybe the Police supercomputer is really just a single consumer machine running a Ryzen 9 CPU with a ton of RGB fans?

And what I found hilarious was how the guy who was arrested was hinted in being one of the best computer scientists around and worked on an encryption algorithm that had not been deciphered in the drama. Do you wanna bet that guy is also a hacker? There is this strange belief that if someone can do computer science and/or program they are automatically knowledgeable in the arts of hacking.

Episode 14: man this episode made me feel really bad for Ruco Chan, I mean that guy cannot catch a break! We see how pathetic he had been living for the 3 months after breaking up with Rosina with the eating alone at home and the avoiding alcohol thing. I know the Ruco curse is still active so there is a chance he won’t get back with Rosina if TVB are feeling like assholes, but this episode just made me feel so bad for him when Rosina said “sorry but we can’t be friends, let’s just be colleagues” after Ruco went all out and said he would wait for her.

Episode 15: lol wtf? This episode made me laugh so hard. So Crystal’s boyfriend is the super smart Computer Science banking nerd that cops wrongly arrested and funnily said his desktop PC was as powerful as the Police supercomputer. Well in this episode he is helping the cops try to find out who this weird Darkweb guy called Perseus was. He even roped in Crystal to help him do some “hacking” to detect when Perseus would send cryptocurrency to some mercenaries and intercept it. What made me laugh was how Crystal’s Computer genius boyfriend’s reply to every problem the cops raised was “oh yeah I can download some software for that” or “yeah I can get a program for that.” Like dude, ain’t you like some hotshot hacker lord, why are your solutions all off-the-shelf stuff you can buy? What were you planning? Installing Microsoft Office 365 and writing an Excel macro on their supercomputer? What’s extra hilarious was how he requested to use the cops supercomputer to do the processing and the cops were like “sure dude, install your shit on there”. That’s not good practice, and doesn’t he have his own desktop PC supercomputer at home? I'm calling this now. Crystal's boyfriend is going to die. I can feel my TVB trope senses tingling.

Episode 21: man what an episode. So Crystal Fung’s old Venezuelan orphanage friend, played by Sheldon Lo, who we get to know in earlier episodes turned out to be a “bad guy”, but I found myself really supporting him. He was smart, calm, and a great strategist, so much so that he found out his boss was going to double cross him so he found a way to turn it around back on his boss. He is also shown to be a great marksman doing incredible firearms action in this episode. Later, as he was about to escape on a yacht, Ruco catches up and was about to arrest him when these assassins turn up and they are forced to work together to survive. It was a great scene and showed that the guy was not that bad and he really was the anti-hero type and it suited him. He had that handsome look with a rebellious nature about it that suited the anti-hero vibe. Later we find out he escaped to Mexico and joined a new crime syndicate for protection so I got excited that we may see him again, but soon we get a one month flash forward and Crystal is at a church lighting a candle for someone, and it turned out our anti-hero died off screen in a fire fight in Mexico. TVB did our guy dirty, such a great character just unceremoniously killed offscreen. I hope he get more roles like this in future because he was great.

Episode 23: ouch Crystal’s boyfriend is in a coma because he had an allergy reaction to bromide gas. Alex orchestrated the entire thing because the boyfriend was, again, aiding the cops in decrypting Alex’s darkweb messages. This would be quite a blow to the cops EXCEPT our expert computer science genius oursourced a lot of the work to his Decryption Association Group he was a part of as he couldn’t decrypt it on his own. This was so stupid because usually Police would not just easily allow such a thing to occur as it was highly classified work, they would have to interview individuals and have them work at the Station to ensure confidentiality, instead here this guy goes “hey can I send this confidential stuff online to my buddies at the Association to help?” And the cops go “sure dude”. If it was that easy, why even ask the boyfriend to help in the first place? As he is in a coma I am going to say he won’t die because if TVB wanted him to die it would have been immediate.

Episode 24: we finally get to see Alex Fong develop romantic feelings for Rosina after they keep running into each other. Alex, after seeing Rosina holding photos of Ruco and hearing from Crystal how they still have feelings for each other, decide to go the petty pathetic route of attempting to shame Ruco out of his career so he wouldn’t have a chance with Rosina anymore. Like who does that? It is such a childish thing to do. If anything I bet this would bring Ruco and Ruco back together again.

Episode 25: okay so it seems Ruco loses his court battle thanks to the machinations of Alex Fong, this results in Ruco going to prison for 28 months. Ruco going to prison and framed for monetary theft was just heart breaking, but we see the beginnings of Rosina starting break out of her shell and show immense concern for Ruco. Oh man, they are gonna get back together for sure. I was wrong about Rosina and Alex getting together, I’ll admit that and with only 5 episodes left there is a very low possibility of it happening now so my guess now is that Alex is going to get rejected by Rosina and Alex won’t understand why because he is such a childish shithead, then most likely would have her kidnapped because that’s what creeps do. Let’s see.

Final update: man the last 5 episodes were a rollercoaster. We saw how Ruco was exonerated so he was let out of prison along with the experience bringing him and Rosina back together again. This was great! But on the other hand you how really stupid scenes like Jonathan Cheung escaping prison without outside assistance purely by chance. They were transporting him to hospital when suddenly a black dog in the road causes the driver to swerve off and crash and Johnny took the opportunity to escape. That was so unearned and cheap that it felt insulting.

We then get Alex planning all these terrorist stuff and right at the last minute he calls off the plan because - and get this - he discovered love. Wtf?

Right near the end we find out that Johnny had set up a dirty nuclear bomb on the roof of a skyscraper, and that getting too close to it would give the people such high levels of radiation poisoning they would die in 5 minutes. Ruco and Ben have everybody evacuate and then decide who would disarm it with a coin toss. I thought TVB were going to kill off Ruco so the curse was in full effect, but suddenly out of the blue, Alex arrives and says he would disarm the bomb as a way of atonement for his previous actions. Of course, they let him because the main characters can’t die, and Alex deactivates the bomb before succumbing to the radiation. I didn’t care about Alex dying though, the guy killed his dad so when he died I just said, “good”.

The ending was quite a happy one and I am glad Ruco got a happy ending, a proper happy ending, in a serious drama. It is a shame they ruined it with some really silly choices in where the story was going. Overall score is a 7.5 as the silly scenes pulled it down slightly, but still a great rewatch drama for sure.

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Completed
In Bed with a Stranger
4 people found this review helpful
Feb 27, 2024
25 of 25 episodes seen
Completed 1
Overall 4.5
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 4.5
Music 4.0
Rewatch Value 4.0
This review may contain spoilers

Lol episode 1 and already it is all so predictable

Man, I love Joe Ma but this drama from episode 1 had been predictable, and I mean every typical TVB trope was thrown in here from amnesia, lost in translation in a foreign country, suddenly causing a wedding to be cancelled, the situations that force boy and girl to embrace… everything is used in episode 1. I swear every time I called out a prediction it came true because of how lazy whomever wrote the screenplay for this was.

Man… the worst part? Joe Ma got an award near the start of the 1st episode, and when there was close up of the award it made me laugh out loud. It had the label “23rd Top Ten figthers award”, but they made a typo with the word “fighters” and wrote it “figthers”. Clearly it is wrong but they decided not to change it. That alone tells you how much budget was allocated to this drama, so who knows about the quality of the upcoming episodes. Damn I’m worried.

Episode 4: watching up to this episode and so far everything has been predictable. Even the guy that tried to hurt Mandy Wong I got it mostly right. I knew he had gone to prison and someone would get run over on the road because that’s the TVB way. I thought both his wife and kid would get hit and killed by a car but it was just the wife, so I’ll give that to TVB.

Some scenes were just plain setting a bad example for viewers. Joe Ma drove in this classic red BMW 5 series convertible to pick up Kelly Cheung. He spent the entire drive with one hand on the stick, which was on purpose so that Kelly could put her hand on his during one of their touching chats. This meant for the entire trip Joe was steering one handed, very safe (!). When we see Kelly put her hand on Joe’s, we can clearly see the car had automatic transmission and he had it on drive, so there was no reason to have his hand on it besides from the Director wanting the shot where they held hands. Lol what?

What I found hilarious was the obvious product placement of the red flower oil. Man, they zoom in so you get a good hard look at the bottle just before Kelly Cheung uses it on Joe.

Update: I’ve watched up to episode 14 and man what have I been watching? This drama is just a giant commercial and platform to advertise products. You’ll see how the actors blatantly put cup noodles, medicinal rubbing oils, paper map books and even Seahorse mattress. Jesus!

So far, some things in the drama have been so bad, like when Joe Ma grabs Mandy Wong to jump out of a boarded up window because the place was on fire. I thought it was quite high up, but they just crash through the wooden boards as if they were made of paper, then landed on the ground outside on the same level! That had me laughing out so loud because of how stupid it looked.

Another one that had me go wtf was when somehow Joe Ma worked out how some special code written in an old diary entry by Mandy was deciphered using the map book. The code was something like MB123456, and somehow from that Joe worked out MB was for “map”. How does MB mean map? And the numbers were the page number and co-ordinates on that page. Joe then randomly grabs a map book that he happened to have in a car, and coincidentally this was the right book to use to apply his theory. Joe then travelled to that location with his partner and they started randomly digging to look for whatever may be hidden. This part made me laugh even harder because Joe started digging in one spot 3 times and decides nope, not here. He walked to a second location and dug twice and bang, he hit something! He quickly dug it out and it was a small metal box the size of a tissue box. Like how lucky was that! Second attempt and somehow Joe hits that tiny tissue box! Man, why didn’t he use a metal detector to make it more believable? Joe took the box home, opened it and finds a dictation machine buried there 7 years ago. Joe turned it on and there is power! 7 years in the ground and the machine still had power to it! Joe listened to the last recording and of course it had a conversation that was incrimination to him so he deleted it.

This drama is going to get worse isn’t it?

Episode 18: omg, this episode gave us some proper laughable scenes. Check it out, Joey Law is going through 2015 street camera footage similar to Google Maps Streetview. Now, how can you get 2015 Streetview-like footage in 2023 I have no idea, but it is the same sort of browsing around the roads stuff. Joey virtually checks a road and suddenly he spots a couple in the back and in a complete blurry mess. Joey clicks to zoom in and suddenly we are shown a fully hi-res 4K crystal clear image of Joe and Kelly standing together as if it came from a DSLR. Like what technology was Joey using here? It doesn’t even blur out faces to protect identities or anything.

And the pièce de résistance, Joey Law tries to get access to Joe Ma’s safe and to do so he used a thin piece of plastic and places it over the safes’ keys. He doesn’t dust the keys or anything, just slaps the plastic on and lifts it to find black fingerprints on the keys Joe used to open the safe.

How is this drama rating higher than the drama Happily Ever after?

Episode 22: man this episode gave me some good laughs. Mandy nearly gets abducted, so she scratches the man’s right arm then falls over, hits her head and passes out. Joe Ma happened to be around, so he wrestled the same man. That man scratched Joe’s right arm as well before escaping. Mandy later sees Joe’s arm injured and suspects it was him. You know this is so stupid on so many levels because the suspect redirection was so forced, and also the cops here are not properly doing their jobs. If Mandy scratched the man who tried to kidnap her, they could remove the skin from under her nails, do a DNA test like in past TVB dramas and prove Joe was not the man. Why was it not done here? Because the Director didn’t allow it in the plot.

Final update: man I just finished the drama and I can tell you one thing… I called it! I knew Joe Ma was a good guy, it is rare that he is the bad guy in these dramas so all the red herrings being planted throughout the drama to make Joe look like the bad guy I knew were all BS. But the biggest plothole was in episode one where it ended with Joe visiting the location where his then wife Mandy fell off the cliff. How did he know to go there? That was planted with no explanation since he didn’t know where Mandy went missing.

Of course, we have the misunderstanding fully revealed with Mandy realising Joe was the good guy right at the end, and we get the typical TVB trope of a diary entry left by Joe that explained everything on one page. It’s never a daily one page entry per day, it is always one page that explains everything in the past up to that point in time. Convenient. And I also called out that Mandy would get back with Joe and somehow their situations would be reversed. And guess what? It happened. So Joe saves Mandy from falling off the cliff again, but he himself nearly falls. However, his fiancee Kelly - who happened to be the original person who pushed Mandy off the cliff (which I also called out) - saves Joe and she herself instead fell down the cliff. Joe then gets knocked unconscious by Frederick Cheng and was about to be killed when conveniently the cops arrive with Joey Law, and Joe is left in a coma for one week. At the end of the week, a lady - whose face we are not shown - goes to visit Joe in his hospital bed. This is implied to be Kelly’s spirit as it has been a week and suddenly Joe wakes up. We see Mandy now looking after Joe and his company while Joe now has amnesia.

I found Mandy really annoying because I knew everything she was doing was a misunderstanding against Joe. Later after she allegedly regained all her memories, she claimed in public that it was Joe that pushed her off the cliff. This is so dumb, because near the end when Kelly rescues her from Frederick going nuts, she finally remembers it was Kelly who pushed her off the cliff, not Joe. We get a flashback and can see Kelly dressed in BLACK in the DAYTIME attacking Mandy and chasing her to the cliff without a mask on so Mandy could clearly see her face, and it was Kelly that shoved her off. That really made me angry with Mandy, like you can remember everything but you couldn’t remember that important moment that led to you going missing? Geez!

The weird thing was that Kelly was great in this drama. Frederick Cheng also did a great job as a spoiled rich kid who needed people to help cover up his nonsense. Most of the stuff happening in the drama was a result of him being an idiot and the cover ups not being good enough to prevent others finding out.

The biggest annoying person in the drama is by far Joey Law. He had funny moment for sure so he isn’t the usual wallpaper paste as in his other dramas, but he had this unexplained bias towards Joe that made no sense. Even before they met he was looking into Joe’s past and kept saying Joe was a liar and a pretender and a bastard… anything to make Joe sound like the bad guy when he had no basis to these beliefs. Later when they meet Joey is standoff-ish, and this continued throughout the entire drama even in situations where clearly Joe did nothing wrong.

Overall, a predictable drama and it is below average. It had sparks of something great and some of the actors made their roles look good, but man it suffered from too many issues to be good. Better luck next time TVB, stop reusing so many tired tropes in one drama! There should be a trope limit given to Producers before they start producing anything.

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Completed
Happily Ever After?
3 people found this review helpful
Feb 27, 2024
20 of 20 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 8.5
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
This review may contain spoilers

Man what a strong start

Episode 1 just dropped and I gotta say it is a strong start. Him Law and Yoyo Chen are the first couple featured in the first story and the acting here is incredible, just top class stuff. It was also masterfully written because it starts at the current situation and then the past is slowly revealed so it allows the viewer to have some sympathy for Him Law that lingers even after the reveal is made. Him Law and Yoyo Chen play a happily married couple and have a daughter together, but as the episode goes along you can quickly see that they are going through a divorce and the wife is very cold and angry. You feel bad for Him as you see how terrible his situation is, but as you think Yoyo is a hateful bitch, there is a big reveal where Him cheated on her with another woman, and even though she forgave him she found he had been writing a novel about his experience. This made her lose her calm and she goes full on angry tiger woman mode. I was firmly on Him’s side, but after that reveal I was emotionally conflicted. If the story had been told from beginning to end we would not have had that same emotional reaction as we would have known immediately Him was the asshole. Well played writer, well played.

I am now excited for the other stories and this first one is not even done yet! Most of the cast is strong but we do have the yawn inducing Joey Law in there so I am dreading his story coming up as he is awful at acting, but we’ll see how it goes. Good start so far!

Episode 3: man Chris Lai is so cool in this episode. His character here for the first story is elaborated on and we see he is actually is a great guy and really wants to help Him Law and Yoyo Chen be okay together. We see the flashbacks and how he encourages Yoyo to be more open minded to how annoying her husband is. Later, unsurprisingly, we discover Chris has feelings for Yoyo ever since they first met but was unable to act upon them because he was such a girl magnet (and rightly so, he is damn charming). They share a kiss during a time when Yoyo was really upset over her husband, but he managed to push her back to prevent it getting out of hand. This causes some tension between him and his girlfriend, especially when he finds out that it was his girlfriend’s younger sister that slept with Him Law, but he sorts it out by being honest with her sells his car where he shared the kiss with Yoyo so he can forget about it. Man, this was a good episode.

Update: man what a rollercoaster. This show brings to light how complicated and complex it is being an adult and being in love. It shows how divorce can affect the most innocent victims in a marriage: the children, and it shows how someone's love can go through changes and lead to different destinations.

Chris Lai's story is really sad but he is also my favourite character in the drama. He goes from a carefree laid-back kind of lover and matures into a more serious person and we see this emotional growth. His and Winki's story had a really sad subplot that drove a wedge between them, but I am glad in the end it all worked out.

This drama is also the only drama where I found Joey Law tolerable. His immaturity remained almost constant throughout the drama, but he finally matured - along with the former loveaholic Venus Wong - that he managed to save their failing marriage.

The only annoying factor here is Him Law. Man, his character was so darn annoying. He messed up at the beginning, messed up later when in a new relationship, then when he was semi-back with his wife and found out he had cancer in his right leg, he started to push his family away, acting nonchalant and telling his daughter he wouldn’t be around forever, especially when his daughter really needed him. His daughter put it best when she said, "Are you guys crazy?" When she called out her mum on her control freak nature and her Dad for being stupid trying to push them away when he had cancer, and they both just walked away from her. Why do TVB HK dramas always do this? A character finds out he has a terminal illness, so to "protect" his family he doesn't tell them, stays away from them to ease them into not having them around, and then decides to suffer in silence. That's so stupid, when they die their friends and family would all find out anyway and hate them for not telling anybody. Please stop this TVB, be normal for once.

Overall, a great series worth rewatching!

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Completed
Justice Sung Begins
2 people found this review helpful
Feb 18, 2024
18 of 18 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 7.0
Story 6.0
Acting/Cast 7.0
Music 9.0
Rewatch Value 6.0
This review may contain spoilers

This drama is surprisingly good, but…

I thought I would watch it for a while before writing a review as it started out pretty good, but as most dramas shown on TVB get worse later after a good start, I was hesitant to post an early opinion on this. However, I did not need to be concerned as this drama kicks all kinds of butt!

Vincent Wong stars as the Song Sai Kit, the incredibly intelligent, hilarious and sometimes lecherous lawyer. He had the potential to become a government official but gave up when he noticed how officials just bullied people, instead swapping his exam paper with a future ally played by Lam Chi Chung. Many do not know who Lam Chi Chung is until you say “oh you know, that fat guy who was in Stephen Chow’s last few movies” and immediately people go “oooh!!” Lam Chi Chung is also the director of this drama, and you can see some of the Stephen Chow influences in this drama for sure, but I believe this is fine because he was able to work with such a legend.

We follow Vincent around as he makes a name for himself slowly becoming known as the greatest lawyer or “King of Lawyers” for his righteous deeds, albeit not always his original intention for doing so. Watching the main characters do some cross dressing and getting into mischief was all very entertaining to watch. Elaine Yiu plays Ling Lung, Vincent’s wife in the drama and she does an amazing job in portraying the simple-minded and naive nature of the character, along with her great knowledge of martial arts. The chemistry between her and Vincent is okay, nothing amazing but it represents their relationship early in the drama accurately as Vincent initially wanted a divorce as he was forced into the marriage.

What spurred me to write this review was the recent case that just wrapped up in episode 14 and had me laughing my butt off. Vincent decides to spread his name around China so travels with his wife and buddies to a neighbouring town. In this town, there is a disgusting villain who cons people into digging up coal under the pretence of digging up gold, making them sign contracts that essentially prevent them leaving early. When these people discover it’s coal and not gold so want to leave, they get beaten half to death and cannot go since the contracts prevent them anyway. This villain was named Wong Ho Shun, basically Vincent Wong actual Chinese name. Vincent essentially spends a few episodes calling himself a disgusting asshole and every other curse from the period, which is hilarious if you’re in on the joke. Later when under a disguise, he is asked what his name was so he gave a false name Cheung Chun-long, which is Owen Cheung’s real name and an actor he worked with on several TVB dramas. That was a great meta joke and you need to be a fan of TVB dramas to really get it but I loved it.

The weakest parts of the drama come from two places: Ada Wong and the dubbing. Ignoring that Ada Wong is Wong Jing’s daughter (yes, THAT Wong Jing), here she only has one mode: angry uncivilised girl. She just growls and screams all her lines so there is nothing really compelling about her character, she’s just there to be the love interest to Ah Kau, played by King Kong Lee, but at least it isn’t too offensive so I can ignore it. Also, the dubbing can be quite jarring. Luckily the lipsync is very good but you can tell when a section was dubbed over because of how the audio changes and feels off. I understand that some lines need to be dubbed due to poor audio at the time of recording, but as I always say, just get a better boom mic.

So far this is great. This drama only had 18 episodes so we have 4 left and haven’t seen Benny Chan yet, so I am guessing the final 4 episodes will involve him somehow. Man, I am not a fan of Benny Chan as his acting is literally just him shouting a lot, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe Lam Chi Chung flexed his director muscle/fat and reined in Benny’s anger acting? We can only wait and see.

Update: dammit, the final case gave me huge mixed emotions. The last case is really the most complex and the stakes are high. We really see the main cast acting serious, it is great to see Vincent Wong and Elaine Yiu finally using their dramatic acting skills finally as the entire drama up until then had been very lighthearted. However, the screenwriter messes this all up.

We see Ada Wong get drugged and violently raped by a British Envoy. She is found by King Kong Lee and taken to safety. Up until then I found Ada really annoying but after that scene and seeing her reaction later as she had to deal with the trauma of what happened to her and finding out that Vincent was going to defend that British Envoy, I felt she had improved and was going to accept her character. But not a few episodes later, after a week of so had passed in the drama, she appeared to back to normal and completely fine! No PTSD? No fear of going out alone at night? She recovered remarkably quickly as if rape was such an easy thing to get over. Wtf?

What I also found ridiculous was Ling Long’s secret back story. Vincent divorces her so that in the event he messes up the case with the British guy that he would not get her killed as well, but just as assassins come to kill Vincent due to him deciding to turn against the British guy, Ling Long suddenly appears and fights them all off. Now this scene alone was really dumb because in the entire fight Ling Long is outnumbered by 20 people or more, and yet the assassins all target her when she appears and nobody thinks “oh hey while she is busy let’s chop Sung Sai Kit in half” as nobody pays him any attention. In any case, they manage to escape and we find out Ling Long was a member of the Little Dagger Clan that helped people, and that clan decided that Vincent was worth protecting as he looked like he could also help people. So how do they decide to protect him. Let Ling Long marry him. What? So you’re telling me Ling Long, who was working at a brothel when they first met, suddenly decided at that time Vincent was worth protecting and became his wife? This is not elaborated on at all, when did the clan decide he was worth protecting? How did they know he would not be a selfish money grabbing bastard? Nothing is explained!

And finally we get to Benny Chan as Chan Mong Gat, who finally appears in the last 2 episodes. The guy has not changed at all, his acting is just him shouting loudly and being obnoxious. There is not subtlety at all to his acting method, so I was glad he only appeared very briefly, but it was so brief that I do not think he was worth adding to the main poster of the drama. Why put him in there?

Despite those issues, overall this is a good drama. The crap dragged the score from a 9 to a 7 because it felt rushed and sensitive topics were not approached tactfully. It felt like this needed to be 20 episodes and not 18, but hey I didn’t decide on the episode count. The drama ends on a cliffhanger so we may get a season 2, hopefully season 2 has more episodes and handles it’s sensitive topics more carefully.

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Completed
A Fallen Xian
2 people found this review helpful
Feb 6, 2024
20 of 20 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 5.0
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 6.0
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 5.0
This review may contain spoilers

An average drama with a seriously annoying male lead

I do love a drama about gods and demons and so on. At first glance this appeared to tick the boxes, but then it fell into the predictable cliches TVB employs.

I usually find Brian Tse pretty bland to watch, almost like wallpaper paste or window dressing that is just a white veil. Nothing offensive but nothing outstanding, he is just there. However, this is a perfect match for his role as an immortal because the expected mannerisms of Lu Dong Bin just somehow compliments his acting method tremendously well. I found myself quite enjoying him in this role and I never thought I would say that. Predictably, the moment he was introduced with all his magical powers, TVB had to take them away so that the drama could last 20 episodes instead of being sorted in a single one, but the way he loses his powers was by his beard getting set on fire. That made no sense, why would his magical powers be tied to his beard? That’s like working out and getting all these muscles but one day losing your physique because somebody shaved your pubic hair.

Erica Chan is okay. So far - 7 episodes in - I do not have any lasting impression of her. The actress can be pretty good as she was one of the standout female characters of that TCM drama, but here she is just… there. I don’t hate her character but I feel like she lack the main female lead charisma needed to carry the show.

And then we have the most annoying character in the show played by Danny Hung. Man, he is a swindler here but he spends most of it constantly acting like a brash childish idiot screaming at Brian Tse the entire time. Brian has amazing patience as he accepts being shouted at but I just found myself hating Danny the more I watched the drama. It is not really Danny’s acting since he was great in the TCM drama, it was just that his role was so poorly written. He has two modes so far: throwing himself into a jealous outburst whenever anybody even comes close to Erica, or acting all high and noble as everybody thinks his is an immortal. His character was also written so stupidly, because he backstory was that he really believed in Lu Dong Bin as a child, but one day people came over to his house demanding his grandfather paid his debt due to his grandfather’s gambling habit. He prayed to Lu Dong Bin for help but Lu never came, and so he doesn’t believe in the gods and uses it to swindle people. Like his grandfather brought it on himself, how could he blame it on the gods? He should have blamed his grandfather for gambling with no abandon.

In any case, let’s see how this progresses. I never thought Brian Tse would be this dramas’ saving grace but there you go.

Update: yet another filler drama from TVB that just disappoints. We get the demon as I was hoping for but unfortunately it was introduced too late to really matter. So a “hidden treasure map” is introduced mid-way into the drama, leading to Danny discovering the map to it and finding a magical hairpin. Yes, of all things, it is a magical hairpin stuck inside a rock face. Danny removes it and discovers he can do magical feats with it, but at the cost of his health every time he uses it. It turns out that Brian’s godly Lu Dong Bin fought a demonic Pangolin that had 1000 years of magical training so was highly formidable so was unable to beat it. To help him, Erica - who was then a fairy - stole the Queen Mother of the West’s hairpin in order to give it to Brian and aid him in his fight against the Pangolin. The Queen Mother discovers this and was very upset about this not because she stole the hairpin, but because Erica fell in love with Brian (oh no) so she is punished to suffer 10 cycles of life to let go of her love. Meanwhile, Brian managed to defeat the Pangolin with the hairpin because of all the moisturiser that rubbed off on it from the Queen Mother’s head, but not enough to kill it completely but only seal him within the mountain as long as the L’Oreal hairpin stayed in there.

Danny was an annoying anus all the way until the end. He does something really heroic at the end despite learning it would likely kill him and he ends up in heaven facing the King of Heaven, but he spends the entire time disrespecting someone this important, but the King Of Heaven is really easygoing. The King of Heaven later offers Danny the chance to study and train to become a god, but Danny declines it (wtf?) The final episodes forces Danny and Erica together and I feel that it was undeserved because for 19 episodes Erica was pining after Brian, who as a god could not reciprocate her feelings. Then, out of the blue, Erica suddenly cares about Danny and then boom, they get together. No. It was totally unearned.

Again, Brian is the only redeeming feature of this drama. I liked his acting here but it is not enough for me to rewatch this in the future. Just Danny’s character in this was enough for me to never touch this again.

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Completed
The Airport Diary
5 people found this review helpful
Jan 16, 2024
10 of 10 episodes seen
Completed 1
Overall 3.5
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 4.0
Music 2.5
Rewatch Value 4.0
This review may contain spoilers

Basically a huge advertisement for HKIA

You know… I knew this would be somewhat of a program informing viewers of how Hong Kong International Airport functions, but I was not prepared for episode 1. We get introduced to the main characters and how they worked together, but suddenly, out of the blue, JW’s Wish started to play. This was the love theme for Kenneth Ma and Natalie Tong in Big White Duel, which represented their connection despite being divorced, so why was it playing here? Because Kenneth Ma here is divorced from Sisley Choi. I found that so lazy, like the only thing that could make it lazier would be Sisley Choi divorcing him because of a miscarriage that was her fault and Kenneth not knowing about it. In any case, episode 1 ends in a spectacularly cheesy way with the main cast all staring off into the sun in the distance. Was it meant to be inspirational? Dude, it’s just an airport!

Episode 2 introduces some other supporting cast members and more BAU airport activities, but what I noticed that was not normal was how everybody - and I mean EVERYBODY - brought up Kenneth and Sisley’s divorce so casually as if it was a minor thing and even tries to get them back together. I don’t know if the writers have been around real divorced people who work together but nobody brings it up out of respect as it would make for some real awkward moments if done so. Even if they do it would be every now and then as required, here it is constant “I’m a divorcee” or “hey sis-in-law opps lol not really”… just no.

Do you know what I found really wrong? Some of the depictions of the staff and commuters at the airport. Man, the staff at the check-in desk were really patient and talked to this old gentleman as he couldn’t find his passport, and after some time he found it made some small talk with the check-in staff. Do you know what would happen in real life? He would be asked to stand aside to allow other passengers to check-in while he looked for it as the other passengers in the queue all start asking, “Yo, what’s the hold up?”

And man, the theme song sucks. It is so forgettable it is like why even bother. They could have saved the money and just do an ICAC musical thing and boom done it would have made no difference.

As this is just 10 episodes long in total, there are not many more episodes to see if things improve, but I am not holding my breath. A completely quick cash grab HKIA sponsored load of nonsense so far.

Episode 3: BAU, but Sisley Choi is really annoying in this episode as we see her and Kenneth dancing awkwardly around the fact they are divorced but still have to work together. You can tell Kenneth wants to get back with her but she’s all evasive.

Episode 4: man this episode… like what were the cameramen thinking. Rosita Kwok was wearing a really short skirt to show off her legs, but in one scene the camera was almost an upskirt shot. That had me thinking “what the he…” What made it worse was how unflattering the shot was as you could see all sorts of blemishes on her legs.

Episode 5: this episode had more things that had me call BS. As the episode starts, the airport staff started looking for somebody because they were going to miss their flight and going out of their way to look for them. It turned out the passenger was just shopping and even asked for a few more minutes when they find her. In real-life you know that airport personnel would just let her keep shopping as it isn’t their problem if she missed her flight. I also found Rosita extra annoying this episode as she had dropped her ID card and it was found by Ricco. Ricco tries to return it but she is unbelievably rude to him, even later snatching the card from his hand at lost and found. No normal person would act like this in a professional setting especially to someone they just met when Ricco did not even do anything inappropriate.

Episode 6: not bad.

Episode 7: finally something somewhat juicy is happening with Tiffany and Sisley meeting for the first time, the ex-girlfriend and ex-wife of our charismatic main Kenneth, and only Tiffany knows their status. See this is what I am talking about, but this is introduced too late so I know it is not going to escalate much.

Episode 8: another run-of-the-mill episode. Man, it ends with Rosita in a flight simulator and she’s all wide-eyed and full of wonder. The machine isn’t flying anywhere nor did it have any actuators to simulate movement. It is a stationary cockpit with computer generated imagery. This is like being amazed that the popcorn button of your microwave burns your popcorn.

Episode 9: okay this episode really annoyed me. We finally get the scene where Kenneth and Sisley discuss their divorce and I thought we would get some startling revelation about why they were divorced because they were clearly still in love. And the reason? Sisley: I forgot the reason. Kenneth: same here, must have been trivial. Like wtf, you cannot remember why you guys got divorced? You separated, you signed the papers, and you cannot remember why? I thought maybe it was something traumatic they didn’t wanna discuss and TVB would give us a flashback but no, no flashback no nothing. This show treats marriage and divorce like minor things, and us the audience as idiots if they think we would just roll with that. As this is episode 9 it is clear this will be the only time the subject is approached and the next and final episode they will get back together. Man….

Episode 10: the last episode wraps up the show and pretty much tries to wrap up all loose ends. However, Kenneth and Sisley’s getting back together really annoyed me. Kenneth finally remembered why they got divorced, but Sisley says he doesn’t have to remind her as they shouldn’t dwell of the past and only on the future. So basically we never find out why they were divorced and Sisley really doesn’t want to discuss where they went wrong in the past to improve their relationship going forward. What lesson was this trying to teach its viewers? What was that nonsense?

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Dropped 10/28
Justice Bao the Legend of Young
1 people found this review helpful
Jan 9, 2024
10 of 28 episodes seen
Dropped 0
Overall 3.0
Story 3.0
Acting/Cast 3.0
Music 3.0
Rewatch Value 2.0
This review may contain spoilers

Boring af!

So boring! Man like wtf were the producers thinking? A young Justice Bao is all good but come on, a 10 year old kid as Zhan Zhao running around with a sword and doing dangerous stuff? No! What were they smoking?

The worst part is that it all takes place at an Inn and I could tell it would not deviate from that inn because I am 10 episodes in and they are still there investigating the same single case. I know this is a young Bao Zheng who has yet to become an official, but they make him look incompetent as he is stuck in this inn trying to unravel a murder mystery while being unable to leave due to the outside being too dangerous, all the while being protected by a 10-year-old. Geez.

It started off looking really promising but hot dang the mystery has no pulling power and I got so bored so I am going to drop it. The whole point of Justice Bao is that he solves multiple cases - one after the other - using his wit and intelligence to showcase his abilities, but this drama is clearly focused on one case and one location. This could have worked but only if it wasn’t associated to Justice Bao. Why do this?

But the worst sin of this drama? None of the female actors in it are memorable. They are all just a mush and nobody stands out at all. Wait I take that back, there is one girl Zi Fu Er who played Bai Ruan Ruan who clearly had a main role but was… sadly… ugly. They somehow managed to make a pretty girl look ugly, and that in of itself takes effort.

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Completed
You're Just Not Her
3 people found this review helpful
Jan 4, 2024
15 of 15 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 8.0
Story 8.0
Acting/Cast 8.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 8.0
This review may contain spoilers

A surprisingly good romantic drama

I have only seen this up to episode 9 but I feel I need to put out there how much I enjoy watching this drama. I remember seeing the ad for this with Karl Ting and Crystal Fung plastered all over it and I thought, "Oh no, this is going to suck." I mean the last few roles they had weren't particularly rememberable and they never left a lasting impression. However, this drama had them turn it all around. I can feel their chemistry on the screen and the scenes where they were together and enjoying each other's company felt very genuine. This is all bolstered by a great romantic theme song "Officially Missing You" sang by Aster Lau that is easy to listen to and enjoy time and time again.

I, also so far, have not found any character to hate. The supporting cast are all great and have their own troubles to solve, but they all work together around the main leads without taking too much of the spotlight. Even William Chak is not bad acting as this bastard who just got out of prison.

The story is still quite a mystery because Crystal Fung's character is very serious and angry at the start of the drama, but during an argument and sudden car accident with Karl Ting at the wheel, there is a flash of light with Crystal flying through the windshield and yet she is completely unharmed, with her personality taking a one-eighty degree turn. The once serious and cold Crystal is suddenly very passionate and forgiving of her boyfriend, which Karl did find weird but ultimately accepts. I can't wait to find out what is going on because there have been so many theories on this I have discussed with friends. Is she an Angel in disguise? An alien? Maybe a fox spirit taking Crystal's form to help out her last wishes? We don't know. At least not yet!

Update: boy the last 2 episodes were a massive rollercoaster ride. Karl starts getting annoyed with Crystal sticking her nose into everybody’s business and helping them face their problems. His reasoning is that she would do this behind his back and without considering the feelings of others when doing so. Crystal’s stance is that we should directly face issues and tackle them head on. I understand both arguments so I could not choose a side, I kinda agreed with both arguments so I was massively conflicted.

The disagreement leads to Karl avoiding Crystal and speaking to his grandma and friends for about the situation. All of them tell him how great they thought Krystal was and how she helped them face and resolve their issues. Then finally, in episode 14 while Karl was at an arcade to avoid Krystal at home, he suddenly had an epiphany and ran home to hug Crystal to apologise to her and say how stupid he was for acting like he did when he had such a great girlfriend. This scene was great and I thought the relationship drama was over, but no, there’s more! Karl noticed later that Crystal was trying to hide something in a wicker basket, so he decided to sneakily take a look and discovered a futuristic phone with 7G (7G!!). He saw the background wallpaper had Crystal and himself, but he had an hairstyle he had never had before. He listened to a voicemail and recognised his own voice but he did not remember leaving such a message before. Finally, he watched a video clip where Crystal was being arrested after a car accident before the camera pans over to the passenger side to reveal another version of Karl sitting there dead. This frightens our Karl as he was clearly alive.

Predictably, in episode 15, the final episode, Karl confronts Crystal about this and after pressing her repeatedly, she finally revealed that she was from another universe that found herself in ours after she crashed her car at the same time he crashed his and swapped places with his Crystal. This realisation horrifies Karl because he knew his Crystal was in her universe and was in prison for a crime she did not commit, so he begged other Crystal to bring his Crystal back. Despite the protests of other Crystal’s love for Karl, Karl couldn’t accept this and finally speaks the name of the drama, “You’re just not her.” He said the thing!!

Cue the next few hours of them just wandering around until night when other Crystal decided to kneel down and cry on the side of the freeway. Somebody suddenly drove by and stopped to check on her to make sure she was okay, but other Crystal noticed that the car was the exact same car she drove on the night she crashed. So, predictably, she stole the car and drove it to Karl, asking him to get in as she explained herself. She explained that she thought it was heaven’s way of giving her another chance because her direct approach in her universe led to her boyfriend wanting to break up with her, and in an act of anger she crashed the car, accidentally killing him, but managed to switch places with our Crystal so thought it was an opportunity to start again. Since our Karl was so adamant in getting his Crystal back, other Crystal was going to try and recreate the situation that caused them to switch places by driving the same model of car with them in the car and crashing into the same place with her seatbelt undone. We see this kinda work and other Crystal flies out of the windshield with a huge flash of light.

We finally go to the next scene where Karl wakes up in hospital and asks where Crystal was. The doctor tells him that she had suffered more serious injuries and was in a coma. We spend the last few moments of the episode watching Karl constantly visiting her and waiting for her to wake up, until one day he gets a phone call to inform him she had woken up. He arrives at the hospital and after some hesitation, enters her room to ask of she was his Crystal, where she only smiles, leaving it all ip to the viewer’s interpretation.

The ending was a lovely touch to keep it mysterious and I still really loved the drama, but there were so many things that ruined the immersion. Other Crystal’s carjacking had no consequences at all, and I know it was left out due to time, but it was sending the message that stealing cars was fine as there are no consequences for doing so. Also, during the final scene where Karl wakes up and has Crystal in a coma, none of the other characters are seen to visit them. These characters were seen to be indebted to Crystal and yet we do not see any of them visit Karl or Crystal during their time at the hospital. They didn’t have to be shown saying anything, just a montage of them standing there silent would be enough to show they cared. Also, how does dimensional travel work her? Does it require you drive a Subaru WRX Impreza STi, particularly the 2009 model with the optional sport pack for it to work? Nothing is explained! There are other plotholes as well that doesn’t allow me to give this a score above 8, but ultimately this was a great romantic drama that I hope gets a sequel. The romantic scenes between Karl and Krystal made the romance between Romeo and Juliet in TVB’s recent Romeo and His Butterfly Lover look like a joke.

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Completed
It Remains
1 people found this review helpful
Dec 30, 2023
Completed 0
Overall 3.0
Story 3.0
Acting/Cast 4.0
Music 2.0
Rewatch Value 3.0
This review may contain spoilers

Movie is terrible

I watched this movie and found it terrible. There were some scary moment for sure, but even before we get to the scary parts there is a really confusing tripping intro to the movie where our protagonist is working out how to deal with his girlfriend's death. This was a clusterf*** of nonsense until we get to the hiking trip.

The only actor worth a s*** was David Chiang as he had some real complex backstory that actually had me routing for him, even when his ultimate decision was the massacre of the entire village and kill his daughter's rapist before having his body split into different wine urns. That was some dark stuff, but I can understand and even sympathise with why he did it. The other characters that went on the hike and got tangled up in this mess I really didn't care about, and of course they give the main protagonist the power to see ghosts. Convenient yo.

It ends with everybody dying and the the evil ghost end boss is still floating around, so basically nothing is really rectified. Terrible

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Completed
The Queen of News
2 people found this review helpful
Dec 23, 2023
26 of 26 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 10
Story 10
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 10
Rewatch Value 10
This review may contain spoilers

A great drama, best one in 2023 in my opinion

When I heard Charmaine Sheh was returning to TVB for this one drama I was excited because she was one of my favorite actors to watch on TVB in the past. And here for this drama she does not disappoint. She is a strong independent woman who is called the Queen of News and you can tell from all her interactions and actions that she clearly is the Queen, and had worked hard to get to that position. The other members of the cast really compliment her well as we have great acting such as from Kenneth Ma as her rival at the SNK news station really driving up the tension between the two.

This drama really had the feel of the period drama piece Beyond the Realm of Conscience and its sequel also by TVB, but put into a modern setting. There is a lot of shadowy underhanded work and backstabbing with people constantly switching sides so it just had you second guessing everything that was going on. We have Samantha Ko who started out working for Kenneth and using her sex appeal to draw in the viewers, but she switches sides to Charmaine the moment she felt Kenneth was losing, and we have Regina Ho who was being trained to take over from Charmaine by Charmaine herself, but it turned out she was actually undercover for Kenneth and was secretly dating him. And you have the Director of the station played by Eric Tang who appears to foster calm and friendly competition but was secretly plotting against Charmaine with Kenneth, yet he can’t do much as Charmaine has the support of his boss, Mrs Fong played by Mimi Kung. Their relationships are confusingly intertwined, so you really do not know what is going to happen at any moment. The reveals just kept having me going “whoa what?”

The person with the most interesting character arc was played by Selena Lee. She started out as the neutral party and was vehemently against siding with Charmaine or Kenneth, instead focusing on delivering the truth to viewers. But as the drama went on, she found her beliefs tested and ended up in a real dark place. She came out of it with a massive heel turn, switching from righteous reporter to selfish Selena. As we watch her progress, we understand her thinking and sympathise with her decisions.

The only actor I found annoying was Regina Ho. Man, she is portrayed as this really easily manipulated idiot who is ashamed of her humble beginnings and cannot even handle her younger sister being this brat that needed to be disciplined. Later she started to hallucinate as she started to have a mental breakdown. She was annoying enough already, but she had to commit the biggest sin in the drama by cheating on Kenneth Ma with her uber driver. Like wtf?

The final episodes were not as tense and dramatic as the earlier ones, but it does end with Charmaine’s past catching up with her and a hostage situation to resolve, but I am hopeful for the future because Bosco Wong made a cameo appearance at the end as a possible new rival for Charmaine. That had me very excited, season 2 hurry up and come!

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Completed
Shock Wave 2
1 people found this review helpful
Dec 19, 2023
Completed 0
Overall 6.0
Story 4.0
Acting/Cast 6.5
Music 7.0
Rewatch Value 7.0
This review may contain spoilers

Great action movie but has a weak plot point

Man I love movies with Andy Lau and Sean Lau in them, it is guaranteed to be an exciting film and this one is surely one of those films that had a lot of action with many explosions. The premise of the story is that Andy Lau and Sean Lau are both bomb disposal experts working with the police, but during one event, Andy gets his leg blown off and so is unable to take part in active duty of bomb disposal. Refusing to settle for a desk job, he publicly protests his treatment during an award event when he was to get an ward for his bravery, and then quits his job.

Some time later he was found at a scene where there was a bomb planted, and he manages to get injured in the blast and lose his memory. Yes, it is the old amnesia plot that leads to Andy redeeming himself later in the movie. The action and acting were great but the biggest weakness was in the plot, which just stands out too much for my liking. What happened was that Andy Lau became so disillusioned with his treatment after getting his leg destroyed (people pitying him and not allowing him dispose bombs) that he decided to start a terrorist organisation to bomb key strategic locations in Hong Kong. Like what the actual f, how did “oh no my leg is blown off” escalate to “f Hong Kong Police and Hong Kong, Imma plant bombs yo!”

And boy, despite needing a prosthetic leg, Andy Lau was running and jumping and doing crazy parkour as if his leg was never lost on the first place. Like seriously, if he can do all that the Police should have kept him in active bomb disposal duty. I mean it would cost less fuel to get him to the location as he would be lighter, he wouldn’t lose that leg again if a bomb went off and he wouldn’t have started that terrorist cell in the first place.

Only the action and acting from Andy and Sean keep this movie afloat, everything else was a bit meh.

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Completed
Yu Yu Hakusho
1 people found this review helpful
Dec 19, 2023
5 of 5 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 5.5
Story 5.0
Acting/Cast 6.0
Music 6.0
Rewatch Value 5.0
This review may contain spoilers

Was expecting more

I am a huge fan of the original anime, so when this was announced for Netflix I was hyped!

And then it was released.

Dammit, I wanted to like it so much but the Netflix series ruined a lot of the good stuff with the anime. I liked the actor playing Yusuke, he was likeable, but they took huge liberties with the story to squeeze as much as they could into 5 episodes. They took many of the beginning arcs and stripped them down and tried to squeeze them into 5 episodes. Why? Was it a budget thing? They completed skipped some important character development arcs such as the Genkai Tournament, the 4 Saint Beasts, and the best arc the Dark Tournament. For example, instead of Yusuke earning a place as Genkai’s student, he is just taken to her home in the mountains and starts training.

The action scenes were really good for sure, but they butchered all the great character development and stories that made Yu Yu Hakusho great to begin with.

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Dec 11, 2023
Completed 0
Overall 1.0
Story 1.0
Acting/Cast 3.0
Music 1.0
Rewatch Value 1.0
This review may contain spoilers

What a pile of crap

The only redeeming feature of this movie is Philip Keung in the third story, but even then the story is really weak and the only scary thing was the terrible script Philip was given to work with. He did his best but it was as immersive as a dirty toilet bowl.

The first story involved two friends, one who wanted to be a screenwriter and one who wanted to be a director. They go to a special props shed with many preserved animals, where the scriptwriter writes this amazing serial murder script and wants to be the director of the movie. The aspiring director gets upset at this and claims the screenwriter was being selfish, there is a scuffle, and the screenwriter predictably dies. Aspiring director guy panics and, predictably, he put the screenwriter’s body into a suitcase and pours formaldehyde all over him to preserve the body. The director guy later is able to make the movie using his friends script but then oh no, the cops ask him questions about his missing screenwriter buddy. He claims he hasn’t seen his friend in months and realises the cops are gonna find the location where he killed his friend so decides to go back to burn the place down. This is when - somehow - he discovers his screenwriter buddy had murdered 3 people in different ways as inspiration for his script and had the bodies hidden around the prop shed, which he somehow also discovers. Plot twist, the screenwriter wanted to be the director because he knew it would be the first and last film he would make as he would be arrested soon after it. Oh no, I don’t care.

The story was boring and the deaths were all so crap and had no stakes at all so I didn’t care what happened to anybody. I didn’t even care about the two male leads because they were so unlikeable as well. My biggest issue with this story is that a few months have passed already since all the murders, but when the director guy finds the bodies they are all still fresh and not rotting at all. Do you think corpses stay fresh for months and not rot when stored in the Hong Kong heat? I don’t care how much cling film you use and formaldehyde you use, no body can look that fresh for that long. Also, won’t some dude who doesn’t work as an undertaker be refused purchasing of large quantities of formaldehyde? I am sure you need a lot for 4 cadavers. And also that suitcase where the screenwriter was thrown into must have been made using some legendary material because it was clearly a cloth-like material suitcase and yet none of the formaldehyde leaked out, not even through the zipper gaps. They should have gotten a suitcase sponsorship to promote how great the waterproofing was inside and outside.

The 2nd movie was a slightly better story about 2 girls as aspiring screenwriters (see a trend here?) and the younger girl copying some of the ideas of the older girl to write a great screenplay. The older girl was slightly upset about it, but ultimately let it go. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the younger girl goes missing and the older girl starts seeing the younger girl and thinks she’s a ghost. Oh no! We find out later the younger girl got into a taxi and the taxi driver murdered her because… I dunno. The older girl was hypnotised to try and bring back any useful information about what could have happened to the younger girl. The taxi guy just so happened to work at the same studio as the older girl so he tried to silence her. Suddenly, as the older girl was riding in his taxi and realised the taxi man was likely the murderer, the cops arrive and arrest him. Older girl’s colleague appears and says “yeah I totally suspected him so I called the cops.”

My biggest issue with the 2nd story is that we do not get given any context into why the taxi driver killed the younger girl. We do not truly understand his motivation, the story just goes “oh she died he killed her” and that’s it. We get one scene where taxi man talks to his wife and his wife shouts at him for a variety of things, as if it was trying to imply he was looking for a way to release his pent up anger but it wasn’t enough and I wasn’t convinced. And the “ghost” situations were all in the older girls mind as a result of hypnotism. That was lame.

The third story is the best of the bunch but that’s not saying much, that’s like saying the diahrrea I did today was better than the diahrrea I did yesterday. This is the story that has Philip Keung, who wakes up on a wet floor with temporary amnesia. As he runs around this warehouse he keeps seeing ghostly figures appearing and disappearing around him. Eventually he meets a woman and starts talking to her as if he was very familiar with her but she won’t follow him as he is trying to make her leave with him due to the ghosts that were there. She eventually goes with him and in a room where he saw a ghost there was no ghost there, so she tries to leave and kicks Philip in the balls using a very fake and terribly unconvincing manner. Later we discover Philip was a triad boss and his wife wanted to leave him, so he killed his wife and poured acid all over her body so she wouldn’t leave him, and then be became a vagrant out of guilt. Later some guys drugged him and his friend and took them to a warehouse to conduct illegal experiments as a way to cure this disfigured and ill woman at the behest of some guy. Philip woke up and killed a lot of the people at the warehouse out of anger and passed out due to being injected with something during one of the scuffles. All the ghost stuff and the woman he was talking to were all in his head as he was recovering from the injection. He catches up to the disfigured woman and is about to lill her when all of a sudden someone smacks him at the back of the head and kills him and the story ends.

Story 3 was a confusing mess and what illegal experiments were being conducted to fix what ailment of the woman? Nothing is explained. The story started off pretty good as Philip was dealing with possible supernatural stuff, but it immediately fell in quality the moment the woman - as his hallucinated wife - kicked him between the legs. It was poorly edited and looked incredibly fake that it took me out of the immersion immediately and the rest of the story just fell apart.

Avoid this mess of a movie.

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Completed
Your Highness
1 people found this review helpful
Dec 2, 2023
25 of 25 episodes seen
Completed 0
Overall 9.0
Story 9.0
Acting/Cast 9.0
Music 8.0
Rewatch Value 9.0

This is a great comedy drama! Worth rewatching!

I watched this when it came it first came out but never wrote a review about it as I was busy at the time, but as I have recently watched it again I can safely say this is one great comedy drama that is worth rewatching!

I usually don’t like watching martial art period dramas, but this one is obviously a parody of those kinds of dramas and somehow manages to make it hilarious in the process. For you to really enjoy it, you’d need to understand all the meta references it throws at you, and laugh at the old spins on modern technology such as paper scrolling lyrics on their take of a karaoke machine. There are also so many great Cantonese puns that you would miss out on if you do not understand the language. Whoever came up with 首振鎮個鎮守 was a genius, I always smile whenever it gets mentioned. This drama just kept throwing them at you that it was a non-stop laugh fest when you’re watching it and you get it.

This is also one of the rare dramas where I did not dislike anybody in it. Even Jeannie Chan, who was awful in The Beauty of War, was pretty funny and likeable as the aggressive and amnesiac Princess, who was constantly shouting at her fiancé, Kalok Chow. By far the best part of the drama was watching the 3 amigos Kalok Chow, Brian Chu and Jonathan Cheung interacting and just being really stupid. I liked them all individually with Kalok’s weak body but fast talking style, Brian’s terrible aptitude for martial arts that causes him to develop a mental condition, and Jonathan as the really stupid but massively hilarious idiot of the three who spouts some real nonsense. When the three of them are onscreen at the same time, you can guarantee there would be some pure TV comedy gold.

What are you waiting for? Go watch it! Hopefully the sequel/prequel comes out for it soon because I am hyped!

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