Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars: Reviews

A sequel to My Lucky Stars (actually it's the third in a loose series) this martial arts comedy thriller offers broad humour and high-speed action as Jackie Chan teams up with Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, and other old friends from his childhood orphanage, to defeat ruthless Thai gangsters. The combat scenes are up to the usual high standard as Richard Norton leads a trio of assassins out to silence a police informer, while Hung's none-too-smart cronies lust after a pretty female witness they are ordered to protect. If you like Chan's unique brand of action, you will no doubt buy this anyway, but you should be warned: the fighting sequences are, unfortunately, rather few and far between.

Still, there are compensations. The rotund but remarkably agile Sammo Hung tackles a troupe of transvestite assassins, one of the bumbling supporting players tries (unsuccessfully) using Thai black magic to seduce girls, and you also get future star Michelle Yeoh's first ever action role - a notable cameo as a judo instructor, to say nothing of sexist (happily, endearing not offensive) shenanigans as five horny buffoons spend a night in a house with the cute Rosamund Kwan. In spite of some annoying product placements, Twinkle Twinkle, Lucky Stars offers an impressive mix of gunplay and kung fu, and I'm pleased to see that the BBFC have now realised this film's violence is mostly tongue-in-cheek (there's even a Three Stooges homage!) and have sensibly reduced its certificate from an 18 (of MIA's 2000 video release) to the more fitting 15 (though, personally, I think any 12-year-old could see it without suffering damage).

The Lucky Stars go to Thailand after their misadventures in Tokyo. Their vacation is cut short when Barbara, a cop, disovers that there are three assassins abroad who were out to kill a man from Hong Kong. When the plan succeeds, the group goes back to Hong Kong to find a link to the victim, a beautiful woman named Chow. Meanwhile, Muscles, Ricky, and their new partner join on helping the gang find the deadly assassins.

The official sequel to the comedy/actioner My Lucky Stars, the Three Kung Fu-Teers are back. Jackie, Sammo, and Yuen lead the Lucky Stars gang, once again, into some hilarious hijinks and kung fu fighting. One of the funny sights to check out is Richard Ng's attempt to win girld by a witch doctor (See photo). It's funny!!! There's not, but two babes in this one, kung fu fighting Sibelle Hu returns and now add the radient Rosamund Kwan. There is a diversity between the assassins. There is Chinese stuntman Chung Fat, Japanese karate expert Yasuaki Kurata, and Australian Richard Norton (in his HK film debut, I think). Originally, Norton was to fight Jackie in the finale, but due to injury, it was to "big bro" Sammo to fight him in a funny fight, both checking each other's threshold of pain. Also making his action debut is singer Andy Lau, who after some training from Sammo, can fight pretty good on screen, hence his rep as an action hero. Get ready to laugh. This was the last of the LS film for Chan and Yuen.