Review | Love Suddenly movie review: Hong Kong ensemble romantic comedy starring Mirror’s Anson Kong fails to deliver on any of its interesting premises
- You’ll be longing for the end credits to roll long before the 93 minutes of Love Suddenly are up. The acting is flat and the story full of nonsensical scenes
- Love Suddenly follows four sets of lovers, including Anson Kong’s Chung, stuck in a jaded relationship with Zoe (Karena Ng) but co-writing a relationship blog
2/5 stars
Nobody, except perhaps intoxicated lovebirds on first dates on Valentine’s Day, should be expected to merrily sit through Love Suddenly, a Hong Kong ensemble romantic comedy so inadequately conceived and badly acted that it somehow makes 93 minutes feel. Like. Forever.
Following four pairs of lovers or would-be lovers who find themselves in various nonsensical situations conjured from embarrassing attempts at humour, the movie manages to be neither romantic nor funny, and waste the talents of its cast of emerging actors.
The cohabiting arrangement, which involves two others, is never explained. It’s just as well because the rest of this storyline, which sees Kong help Shirley infiltrate a seedy film shoot for her “research”, makes no sense either. Still, the duo are quirky enough for this to be a diverting watch.
As the latest member of the popular boy band to try his hands at film acting, Kong comes across as the least charismatic performer of the bunch. He is not helped by his character being superficially scripted and a corny and cliched storyline which sees the couple do silly things to attract subscribers.
After Ho is stabbed and sent to a hospital when his efforts to juggle two girlfriends backfire, he is cared for by Tin Tin, who has no problem fitting 10 boyfriends into her schedule because she makes sure everyone knows their place. No point guessing if these two are meant for each other.
Rounding out the quartet of stories are boyfriend-for-hire Jerome (Adam Pak Tin-nam) and his latest client, Silver (Chloe So Ho-yee), who has been raised by her wealthy father (Cheung Tat-ming) in such a controlling manner that she fails to function normally in front of men.
While Pak and So are both attractive actors who render it easier for the audience to like their characters, the vacuum of emotion in their utterly unbelievable story reduces this farce to something akin to a satirical story in search of a target.
Love Suddenly has set him back; he comes across less as a sure-fire talent to watch and more as a wannabe commercial director still reaching for a convincing directing voice to make his own.
