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Kung (Eric Tsang) and Kin's (Jacky Cheung) rivalry goes way back to the seventies when they fought over the same girl, who eventually became Kung's wife (Anita Yuen). Now they run competing phone stores right across from each other on Mongkok's busiest street, and stretch their minds trying to outdo each other with crazy promotions. There's absolutely no mixing with the enemy in these parts - until Kung and Kin's kids fall for each other! Further chaos breaks out when the landlord triples the rent of all the shop owners to force them out for redevelopment.
A joint production from Shaw Brothers and TVB directed by Eric Tsang and Patrick Kong, 72 Tenants of Prosperity features many, many Hong Kong celebrities in supporting and cameo roles. TVB sent out practically the station's entire roster of artists including Raymond Lam, Fala Chen, Ron Ng, Myolie Wu, Bernice Liu, Charmaine Sheh, Kate Tsui, Michael Tse, Sunny Chan, Kevin Cheng, Lawrence Ng, Joe Ma, Kenneth Ma, Derek Kwok, and Joyce Tang to name a few. And everyone from singers Justin Lo, Fama, Andy Hui, and Denise Ho to actors like Lam Suet, Gordon Lam, Dicky Cheung, Nat Chan, Sam Lee, Maggie Siu, Wayne Lai, and Prudence Liew show up for a Mongkok stroll. Even Kelly Chen makes an appearance as herself. Catching all the cameos and references in 72 Tenants of Prosperity could be the ultimate test of your Hong Kong pop culture knowledge!
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Past and present survival of the common man in the big city - ups and downs, laughters and tears...
In 1970s Hong Kong, rapacious landlords try to evict 72 tenants but sworn brothers Ha Kugn (Eric Tsang) and Shek Kin (Jacky Cheung) help the group of 72 defeat the landlord (Lam Ka Tung) and landlady (Charmaine Sheh) and coincidentally rescue Pinky (Anita Yuen) from a planned forced marriage. When both sworn brothers fall for Pinky and propose to her, she flips a coin "heads or tails" and Ha wins her hand in marriage.
The sworn brothers become sworn enemies and Shek's hatred fuels intense rivalry against Ha in business dealings ranging from the manufacture of plastic flowers to the selling of stinky bean curd. Even after 40 years they continue to clash and in 2010 they are in keen competition selling electronics appliances in Sai Yeung Choi Street, Mongkok, the busiest street in the city and still home to the 72 tenants.
In fiercely competitive Sai Yeung Choi Street high rents force businessmen to use every means to survive, with electronics shops employing pseudo models in sales promotion campaigns and comic shops offering foot=massage services by Lolita, etc. These ploys are minor compared with the tactics of the landlord (mainland actor) who threatens to close down the shops unless his demands for triple rental are met. Amidst this strife and struggle the street is hit by acidattacks and in high spirits the 72 tenants unite and pledge to safeguard their home.
Against a background of fear and turmoil, with the old love triangle between Ha and Pinky and Shek still festering, the next generation of the Ha and Shek families embarks on their own heroic love affairs: mJ-style dancer Ha Junior (Bosco Wong) is fascinated by Shek's daughter (Stephy Tang) who is a Japanese AV culture fan; Ha's daughter (Linda Chung), a kung fu maiden, is pursued by Shek's love-struck son (Wong Cho Lam), the smart shortie. Affairs of the heart yet to be resolved.
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Professional Review of "72 Tenants Of Prosperity (DVD) (Hong Kong Version)"
This professional review refers to 72 Tenants Of Prosperity (Blu-ray) (Hong Kong Version)
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72 Tenants of Prosperity is the second big screen joint production from Shaw Brothers and TVB, and is essentially an updating of the 1973 Shaw hit House of 72 Tenants released domestically as a Lunar New Year comedy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the film's big draw is its stellar and massive cast of Hong Kong stars and personalities, quite incredibly managing to pack in over 100 talents from the TVB roster and beyond, with many famous faces putting in cameo appearances as themselves. Directed by Eric Tsang and Patrick Kong, the film is a local production in the truest sense of the word, showing a very Hong Kong sense of humour and dealing with a variety of classic and contemporary themes.
The plot basically revolves around two families in Mongkok, headed by Kung (Eric Tsang) and Kin's (Jacky Cheung), whose rivalry stretches back through the decades since Hong (Anita Yuen), the neighbourhood beauty they were both in love with, married Kung. Now the two run competing mobile phone shops, plotting to outdo each other while trying to keep their heads above water in the face of threatened closure by a mainland businessman (Leung Tin) who plans to redevelop the area. At the same time, romantic complications ensue when their various children start to fall for each other, with Kung's son (Bosco Wong) pursuing Kin's daughter (Stephy Tang) despite their fathers' objections. There actually is quite a lot more to the plot of 72 Tenants of Prosperity though to list all of its shenanigans would require a long and convoluted list of misunderstandings and sub Romeo and Juliet style romances that wouldn't really do justice to the fact that the film works surprisingly well despite its narrative clumsiness and excess. The film is very much in the Lunar New Year manner, meaning a fair amount of nonsense, though Eric Tsang and Patrick Kong's direction is energetic and breezy rather than chaotic, making for engaging viewing that though unfocused is at least never overly random or undeservedly melodramatic. The film has the feel of an old school Hong Kong farce, and the whole childhood friends turned warring shopkeepers theme is pleasantly familiar, making for plenty of wacky schemes as the two try to usurp each other. The film benefits greatly from having a genuinely local feel, and does have an authentically Hong Kong atmosphere and style, dealing with issues such as rent rises, mainland Chinese business redevelopment and even rooftop acid attacks. Obviously, the film's main selling point is its amazing ensemble cast, and it really does manage to pull together a mind boggling collection of stars from TVB, the big screen, the music industry, and other famous faces. Although it would be impossible to list all of the cameos here, this does include the likes of Lam Suet, Kelly Chen, Myolie Wu, Gordon Lam, Andy Hui, and many, many others. It would likely take a real Hong Kong expert to recognise them all, though thankfully the film uses most of them for throwaway cameos or gags, and even viewers with only a passing knowledge of Hong Kong pop culture aren't left out of the fun too much. The cast all seem to be having a fine old time, and whilst the film does at times feel a little like playing spot the star, this does help to keep things interesting, with a few amusing surprise appearances along the way. Inevitably, this does result in quite a few groan worthy self referential gags, for example about Kin resembling and sounding like Jacky Cheung, though Tsang and Kong wisely don't push this too far. Whilst a lot of the humour is fairly broad slapstick, the film is generally very funny, with some fairly creative gags revolving around Kung and Kin's odd attempts to push their phones, which somehow seems to result in several random musical numbers. At the same time, the film includes some spot on film references, predictably to Ip Man and Donnie Yen, as well as the other recent Shaw TVB collaboration, Turning Point Oddly, the film's funniest moments come through a strange line in Japan AV related jokes, with Stephy Tang's character having worked in the industry and being inexplicably obsessed with its admirable work ethic. Offbeat touches like this give 72 Tenants of Prosperity a real lift, and it works well both as an opportunity to see an incredible amount of Hong Kong luminaries all together in one film, and as an above average Lunar New Year comedy. Cheerful and fun throughout, though nothing particularly new or clever, it entertains in familiar and inoffensive fashion, and marks another successful outing for Shaw Brothers and TVB. by James Mudge - BeyondHollywood.com |
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They haven't made a real stunner yet, but TVB is now 2 for 2 in their bid for big-screen credibility. After earning box office with the summer hit Turning Point, Hong Kong's reigning television monopoly delivers 72 Tenants of Prosperity, a quasi-sequel to the Shaw Brothers classic House of 72 Tenants. The film opens with newly-filmed sequences echoing situations seen in the 1973 original before flashing to the present to follow the next generation of local Hong Kongers as they fight and fume on Mongkok's Sai Yeung Choi Street. Director Eric Tsang (and co-directors Chung Shu-Kai and Patrick Kong) manage genuine laughs and surprises in between maudlin sentiments and occasional awkward moments. Their ratio of good-to-bad is probably less than 3-to-1, but that's still much better than TVB accomplishes on television. Success, like most things in life, is measured in relative terms.
Like most Lunar New Year comedies, 72 Tenants of Prosperity concerns family dynamics and over-extended romantic situations. Kung (Eric Tsang) and Kin (Jacky Cheung) are former best buddies who let their friendship go to rot over Hong (Anita Yuen), who married Kung and bore him two children played by TVB regulars Bosco Wong and Linda Chung. Kin is currently their neighbor and has two children of his own, one played by TVB regular (See a pattern here?) Wong Cho-Lam. Not-a-TVB-regular Stephy Tang plays Kin's daughter, who's enamored with Japanese AV culture and just returned from Japan where she worked as an assistant director on AV films. What follows are some surprising gags acknowledging Tang's minor resemblance to pornstar Akiho Yoshizawa (who's sometimes referred to as "AV Stephy"), and a set-up for a possible romance between Stephy Tang and Bosco Wong's characters. Since their families are estranged, that's your standard Romeo and Juliet storyline right there. Kung and Kin also get pissed at each other over work. The two run competing mobile phone businesses and occasionally spar at their local merchant meetings, where everyone grouses over a dastardly criminal who's throwing bottles of acid from the rooftops - a reference to a serial crime in Hong Kong that's received plenty of local media attention, not to mention parodies in Split Second Murders and Trick or Cheat. 72 Tenants of Prosperity trumps both those films by working that real-life detail directly into the plot, with the acid bomber essentially becoming the film's "big bad". Another potential bad guy is a Mainland property developer (Leung Tin) who may be looking to buy up Mongkok and evict the Sai Yeung Choi locals. The biggest bads, however, are Kung and Kin, whose feud is getting in the way of the mega-mega happy ending. The X-factor is Hong, who may have lingering feelings for Kin despite being married to Kung. Who will she choose? Her heartbroken former flame or the barrel-shaped man who fathered her children? If you answered "both", then congratulations - you guessed right. No, Kung and Kin don't engage in wife-swapping, but the film pretty much does what you'd expect, using every possible means to please the largest audience it can. By the end, love finds a way, the bad guys pay, and the big boys up north are portrayed as so nice that they'll help Hong Kong locals in need. The Mongkok locals eventually get Mainland funding for the "Paradise Project", a redeveloped version of Mongkok that'll give everyone the happy and prosperous ending they're looking for. Also, Kung and Kin's children get together romantically, meaning not only a Bosco Wong-Stephy Tang pairing but also a Wong Cho-Lam-Linda Chung pairing. All these stories are hackneyed and the emotions predictably syrupy, but to the film's credit it sometimes manages to affect. A lot is due to the actors in question, e.g. Jacky Cheung and Anita Yuen sell it beautifully, while Bosco Wong and Stephy Tang aren't quite as successful. Eric Tsang is Eric Tsang, in that he overacts effectively. You can easily evaluate the rest of the cast yourself. Shoring things up are often surprising gags. 72 Tenants of Prosperity gleefully parodies local issues and culture, taking shots at everything from shopping and eating to triads and recycling. Local celebrities get roasted; besides Stephy Tang being likened to Akiho Yoshizawa, the film notes Linda Chung's self-described resemblance to Wu Chun of boy band Fahrenheit, and makes multiple references to Jacky Cheung looking and acting like, well, Jacky Cheung. Wong Cho-Lam gets to show off his own surprising Jacky Cheung impression, and local films and television also get nods. The casting is also fun; Joyce Cheng Yan-Yee cameos in a flashback as the same character played by her late mother Lydia Shum, Prudence Lau reprises her Golden Horse award-winning role from True Women For Sale, and Justin Lo and Raymond Lam play - get this - younger versions of Eric Tsang and Jacky Cheung. Also, seeing Jacky Cheung and Anita Yuen back onscreen in a silly comedy is a joy on its own, and the massive parade of stars (well, television stars) has its attraction. 72 Tenants of Prosperity occasionally stalls. A parody of Ip Man is performed too reverently to be very funny, though seeing Linda Chung as the Donnie Yen stand-in is amusing. Also, Michael Tse reprises the role of Laughing Gor again, making this the third time in less than a year that the audience-favorite character is being pushed by TVB. Then again, TVB has always been all about TVB, and that shows here, with the station's general manager Stephen Chan (who only provides a voiceover) getting top billing during the end credits. The rampant product placement can also be distracting, though the film even pokes fun at the in-movie ads, having Bosco Wong and Wong Cho-Lam show up at the end credits to literally thank each and every sponsor. 72 Tenants of Prosperity is thin commercial cinema but its knowing details, agreeable sentiments, and local humor make it a winning diversion for Hong Kong audiences. International audiences unfamiliar with Hong Kong issues may not be quite as entertained, but that's hardly the movie's fault. Given its genre's inherent limitations, 72 Tenants of Prosperity is a surprising success. by Kozo - LoveHKFilm.com |
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