Review for My Lucky Stars

Introduction

Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao, that is the holy trinity of kung-fu action comedy movies. When you get these three talents together on the same film, it transcends what they are capable of separately, and I have enjoyed their performances in Dragons Forever, Project A, and Wheels on Meals. But I have long heard that for the definitive movie appearances of the trinity, you have to look to the Lucky Stars trilogy, comprising Winners and Sinners, My Lucky Stars, and Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars. I missed them the first time around when Hong Kong Legends went phut, and I almost missed them the second time round, after Cine Asia re-released them, and then promptly went bankrupt. I did manage to find a lingering copy of My Lucky Stars for sale online, after the dust had settled, and you might find a few copies still out there. I finally get to see what all the fuss is about, the best of Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao working together, in the Sammo Hung directed My Lucky Stars.


There’s a former bent Hong Kong cop getting away with all sorts of shenanigans in Japan, but Hong Kong’s finest have sent two of their best to clean up the mess. Ka Kui, undercover as Muscles, and his partner Ricky have tracked down the criminals to a theme park, but at the last minute, they are overwhelmed, and Ricky is captured. Muscles calls Hong Kong for back-up, but another policeman would be instantly spotted. This time he wants help from a criminal, someone who could get in undercover and find out where Ricky is being held. Back in Hong Kong, career criminal Kidstuff (and Muscles’ childhood friend) is serving a light custodial sentence when the police give him an offer he can’t refuse. But he’s not going to do it alone, he’ll want his gang back together as well.

Picture

My Lucky Stars gets a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer on this disc, which is slightly windowboxed. It’s a fair enough transfer of a film that probably hasn’t had the best of care. The colours are a little faded, but the image is stable, free of print damage and relatively clean. This is merely the old Hong Kong Legends release, repackaged and re-labeled, and it’s a transfer that is showing its age at this point, with a fair amount of artefacting and macroblocking, especially when scaled up on a flat panel display, but generally it’s watchable enough. The action comes across without incident.

Be aware that the UK release of My Lucky Stars has been edited to comply with BBFC requirements for a 15 release.

Sound

Audio comes in DD 5.1 Cantonese and English, with English and Dutch subtitles. I went with the original language track, as kung-fu movie dubs make me cry. There is Cantonese and Japanese in the original language audio, but the subtitles translate both languages without distinguishing between the two, which makes a couple of culture clash jokes harder to follow. The surround track is very much a remixed mono track and sounds muffled and hollow as a result. It’s best to downmix it again if possible. Not too long after this, Hong Kong Legends starting putting the original mono audio as an option on discs, and it’s a shame that that they didn’t start that right from the beginning.

Extras

My Lucky Stars presents its content with animated menus. On the disc you’ll find trailers for various out of print discs like Mr Vampire, Zu Warriors, Project A, City Hunter, Battle Creek Brawl, and Police Story.

You’ll find the original theatrical, and UK promo trailers in a Trailer Gallery.

There is a 21 minute interview with Michiko Nishiwaki, who played one of the villains in the film. She talks about her career and the making of the film.


There’s more on this in the interview with Sammo Hung, which lasts 18 minutes, as he discusses where the idea of the movie came from.

Project A actually houses those TV ads that HKL ran for Project A way back when.

Naturally the meat of the extras is the obligatory Bey Logan commentary, which tells you everything you’ll ever need to know, about everything in the entire universe.

Conclusion

I think I’ve watched too many kung-fu comedies. I’ve been watching such movies for over ten years now, been a Jackie Chan fan for almost twice as long, and yesterday, when it came to finally experiencing the best of Hong Kong action comedy, one of the films that fans have rated the most, I found myself sitting there, barely smirking at the puerile humour, and even yawning at the action sequences, which by this time appear to be variations on so much that I have seen before. This film has car chases that I have seen in Armour of God, a moped gag that was used in Police Story, a villainous female with rambunctious fighting skills, who gets knocked out with one punch... that was in Millionaire’s Express.


It’s finally happened, I’ve finally outgrown Jackie Chan movies, I’ve tired of Hong Kong action comedy. Why else would I fail to be impressed by the movie that committed fans have often cited as one of the best? I recently watched a more traditional Jackie Chan caper as well in the form of Dragon Lord, which again failed to hit the spot.


My Lucky Stars is one of those make-it-up-as-we-go-along action comedies, which have less of a script and more a handful of good intentions. The plot is disjointed, and the story makes little logical sense, as long as you forget that it’s really just a series of funny bits, interwoven with a series of action bits, loosely linked together by a story idea.


The comedy is of the teenage, puerile mindset, with a lot of wordplay which never gets across in the translation, a fair bit of slapstick that works, some slapstick that doesn’t, and a little objectification of the sole female member of the cast (lets all contrive to get tied up with her). The action is of the fast-paced, energetic and inventive kung-fu variety, with Jackie, Sammo and Yuen at the top of their respective games, but it’s really just a variation on themes that have been played out before and since. Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao as cops, and Sammo as a petty criminal has been done before, and at least in something like Dragons Forever and Wheels on Meals they chop and change the character archetypes.


If I’d seen My Lucky Stars fifteen years ago, I probably would have enjoyed it a whole lot more, but watching it now has somehow cured me of the urge to fill in those Golden Harvest Jackie Chan gaps on my shelf. I think I’ll be giving Winners and Sinners and Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars a miss.