100 Ways To Murder Your Wife: Reviews

Two well-respected footballers meet one night in a Hong Kong bar. Kenny (Bee) is a highly rated striker for a popular team while 'Football Fa' (Chow) is a star goalkeeper. Over a few drinks, the pair share compliments and, as the evening draws on, their problems. As things turn out, both of these cowardly men have the same major problem: their wives. Kenny's wife (Mui) constantly nags him and designs outrageous outfits that she insists he wears. Meanwhile Football Fa is insanely jealous about his beautiful wife (Wong) and her popularity with his team-mates. Falling into a drunken stupor, both men foolishly agree to get rid of each other's wives. Football Fa seems to have succeeded when he goes to Kenny's house and wakes up thinking he has done the deed. In actual fact, Kenny's wife has left thinking that her husband is with another woman. These two misunderstandings remain hidden though and Football Fa, recovering from the distressing thought of being a murderer, insists that Kenny returns the 'favour'. What follows is an elaborate series of ideas to achieve this dubious goal and get away with it free from blame.

What may sound like an unpleasant crime thriller beacause of the concept and title is actually another of the comedy films that Chow Yun Fat made earlier in his career. Effectively a farce version of Hitchcock's 'Strangers On A Train', '100 Ways To Murder Your Wife' is very light-hearted and, unbelievably, gentle in nature. Although the concept still sounds quite harsh, there's no doubt that the two main male characters are totally devoid of brains and therefore offer very little threat. As a good-natured caper, this is an enjoyable movie with four performers who nearly always entertain. As a comedy though, '100 Ways To Murder Your Wife' is simply not as hilarious as it should have been. The usual farce elements are thrown i.e. misunderstandings and frantic behaviour, but there's little about them that's genuninely amusing. Therefore this never has the hold on the viewer that it could have achieved and instead offers just a few moments of genuine quality. Nonetheless, director Kenny Bee creates an atmosphere that makes the film watchable despite its faults. This is a plus point that was shared by many of those lovable 80s Hong Kong comedies that are sorely missed. Good, but not great.

PICTURE: Average disc. Signs of wear on the print appear throughout the film with white scratches apparent in some scenes. Below average contrast means the very lightest colours come off quite badly, either being too pale or bleeding slightly. On a positive note, most of the film transfers quite well though there's nothing that indicates how good Mega Star releases can sometimes be.

SOUND: DD 5.1 Cantonese or Mandarin soundtracks with English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean subtitles (removable).

TRAILERS: The film itself along with 'Seventh Curse' and 'The Fun, the Luck And The Tycoon'.

EXTRAS: About The Film section. This contains uninteresting information on the synopsis, but does have four reasonable star files on the four leads.

Roberto (Kenny Bee) and Fa (Chow Yun Fat) are professional soccer players. Roberto is young and a bit lazy, not too concerned with his career which leads to constant nagging by his overpowering wife (Anita Mui). Fa, the superstar veteran goalie, is completely paranoid and convinced his young, bubbly, flirty, and attractive wife (Joey Wong) is cheating on him with the teams doctor. The two men meet one night and quickly bond, swapping many stories of injuries, before drowning their sorrows and getting drunk while discussing their martial problems. Faster than you can say Strangers on a Train, the two men agree to murder the others spouse and rid him of his lovelorn domestic grief. On that night, however, Fa is the only one who attempts to see their plan through. The next morning, the two men awake to a drunken haze in Roberto’s torn apart home, convinced that Fa actually went through with their plan and murdered Roberto’s wife. Now, with Roberto despondent (believing his wife, who is very much alive, is a ghost) and Fa insanely jealous enough that he still wants Roberto to follow though with their deadly pact, well, what can I say?... Let the hilarity ensue. Bumbling, harmless HK dark comedy. Abandon all hope of logic. Perhaps the very definition of zany.

Why does Roberto wash his hair in the nightclubs urinal? I think its supposed to be funny... Why, in the same restroom, does the washroom attendant have soup in the sink for the people eat? Once again, its supposed to funny. Its just that oddball Chinese sensibility when it comes to comedy. It makes no sense. Don’t even try. It’ll just make your head hurt... Its pretty lightweight and offbeat little dark comedy, complete with two full blown sappy music video sequences. The seriousness of murdering wives is lifted by the downright inane antics of the two men. Sure they try to employ a few dastardly techniques to kill Fa’s spouse, including piranha, cutting her in half, blowing her up, electrocuting her, impaling her with an ice dagger, and so forth, but Don Knotts makes a more formidable and threatening opponent than these two dolts. For instance, the team trainer/doctor Fa thinks is having an affair with his wife and poisoning him, is not only gay, but trying to lace his drinks with a libido cure to help out his marraige. At one point Fa and Roberto are arguing, trying to insult each other by saying all the ways they would kill each others wife with one of them saying, ”I’ll have her cut in two and have her upper half flogged and her lower half raped.”, and the comment actually manages to be funny just because of the idiocy of the two boneheads.

Roberto is played by Kenny Bee, who also served as the films director, this also being the only film he ever directed. He is a good looking, familiar face from films like Spooky Bunch, My Heart is that Eternal Rose, The Chinese Feast and Savior of the Soul. As the wives, you couldn’t ask for a better duo of soon to be superstar females, Joey Wong Chinese Ghost Story, a nearly endless stream of ghost girl roles, and The Big Heat and pop diva/actress Anita Mui Peking Opera Blues, Miracles, Herioc Trio, and Rouge. And of course, the main draw, Chow Yun Fat, who plays it goofy to the highest level, mugging it up, and throwing tantrums with the strange habit of tearing plants apart when he’s angry (trust me its actually funnier than it sounds). For those only familiar with his heroic hard cop and gangster shoot em’ up roles, its a real change of pace to see Yun Fat in goofy mode, but it was films like this 1986 comedy that kept him afloat until his breakout role in A Better Tomorrow the same year...