The Lady Is The Boss: Quick Takes

Quick Takes Quick Takes:
The Lady Is The Boss
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    by Mimi
    www.hkflix.com




Wow, this is the kind of movie you expect your mind to make up while you’re sleeping after a Shaw movies marathon explosion. This is pretty much what I imagine a Shaw Bros. exhibition show to be - various stars in various staged scenarios and colorful costumes demonstrating how they can kick butt… except at this point there is nothing they need to prove.

A martial arts school, with Kara Hui as the very “Americanized” boss, has only 5 rag-tag students and attempts all sorts of homemade PR events all over Hong Kong to get more students interested in attending. Eventually, they have to settle for the kind of students no one really wants - whores. But, alas, the whores also have their night jobs, and their pimp is none too pleased that they are spending so much time learning martial arts and how to protect their breasts from their johns’ very busy hands. So the pimps beat up the whores (surprise) and keep them locked up in the whorehouse - er, I mean, nightclub - to prevent them from going to class. The martial arts school is so enraged at this injustice that they set up a fashionable trap in a disco and, later on, attack the bad guys with kung fu while riding BMX bikes. When Lady Boss is kidnapped by the bad guys, the school visits one of the bad guy’s nightclubs, armed with cameras as their weapons (the flash is blinding, you see). It turns out that the bad guys are holding her hostage at a gym and there, stylishly dressed and striking studly poses, they wait for the school to show up. Now, this is the creamy center of the film - this is the exhibition OF the exhibition, where Gordon Liu reprises his well-known role as a monk and Ching Siu-Tung shows off his monkey fist, and there are numerous duels between the good and bad guys.

There are some great fight scenes peppered throughout the film, but you really have to sit through some WTF moments to get to them. You get to see some of the more famous and favorite Shaw stars get decked out and let their hair down (except Gordon Liu), kind of like prom night when you see your friends all dressed up and you’re all, “I’ve never seen you looking so lovely as you do tonight… never seen you shine so bright. Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm.”

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    by So Good... - Hong Kong DVD Movie Reviews
    www.sogoodreviews.com



Lau Kar Leung once again turns Chinese traditional values on its head with a modern day effort that just reeks 80s in many ways. He gets amusing results out of the culture clash of martial arts education methods but the broad comedy does not, as expected, make The Lady Is The Boss the smoothest ride.

Lau however is terrific as the old school master having to deal with the modern ways and what really rises the movie up several notches is Lau's combination of traditional kung-fu and modern, for its time, applications. Highlights include the BMX assault led by Kara Hui's character and the climax set in a props filled gymnasium. It's also here that Lau references his past work, such as Mad Monkey Kung Fu and The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin, with exciting results as it's really the first time he lets Gordon Lau and Hsiao Huo loose in the film. In a role reversal from My Young Auntie, it is instead Hsiao who plays the rational student while Kara Hui in general runs wild. Supporting players include Wong Yue, Johnny Wang and Elvis Tsui as one of the students Mei Ling recruits for the martial arts school.

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