Pang Ho-Cheung’s first movie in two years since wrapping up his Love trilogy in Love Off The Cuff (2017) <春嬌救志明> sees the writer-director supposedly made his first-ever Chinese New Year comedy in Missbehavior <恭喜八婆>.
The story basically follows June (June Lam) seeking the help of her old friends (among them are Gigi Leung, Isabel Chan, Dada Chan, Yanki Din, Chui Tien-You and Tan Hanjin) to find a bottle of breast milk after she mistakenly uses her lady boss’ (Isabella Leong) bottled breast milk from the office fridge to make coffee for a client (Patrick Tse). What follows next is a series of misadventures as they try every method to locate a bottle of breast milk before June’s boss finds out about it at the end of the day.
Given Pang’s brand of irreverent comedy that doesn’t exactly spell “family-friendly” typically associated with Chinese New Year movies, it is actually a refreshing change of pace to see something different for once. Missbehavior <恭喜八婆> is one such movie, offering the kind of comedy that relies more on raunchy jokes and Cantonese wordplay. Too bad, our Malaysian Film Censorship Board got a little too snip-happy over most of the Cantonese profanities, despite being classified as an 18-rated movie (which kind of baffled me why bother to place such a rating in the first place!).
Interestingly enough, the movie was reportedly put together in a jiffy over the course of two weeks — which also explained why it tends to feel haphazard in places. Pang, who co-wrote the screenplay alongside Sunny Lau, is also uneven but does manage to score some decent laughs over the reasonably pacey 88-minute running time.
The ensemble cast is all fun to watch for, particularly Dada Chan’s gamely bimbo performance as Internet novelist Rosalin while Lam Suet shows up in a memorable cameo appearance as a bad-tempered waiter who gets most of the laughs in the movie.
Overall, Missbehavior <恭喜八婆> is pretty much a minor effort from Pang Ho-Cheung. It certainly doesn’t reach the same comedic heights previously seen in his comedy classics like Men Suddenly In Black <大丈夫> (2003) and Vulgaria <低俗喜劇> (2012), but it remains decent enough for an irreverent Chinese New Year comedy.
