| Ambitious, senseless Hong Kong madness from Lee Lik-Chi (a frequent Stephen Chow director) seems to want to emulate his success with said star initially but after the wild plot has settled in, gags really start to fly. It's not because Lee is unusually creative or that the initial start to this period comedy is highly muddled. But as sloppy son Chan Ta-Ha (Kenny Bee) manages to kill his dad with a vampire clock and subsequent scenes showing him and wife Chan Wai-Leung (Sharla Cheung) cast out to the country, matters turn around big time. Apparently in possession of a bracelet of pearls from heaven, the couple are blessed with a piece of land that can grow anything into a LARGE something. So they're the talk of the town and even Kingdom Yuen and Wong Yat-Fei tries to utilize the soil. He wants a bigger head and she wants a bigger bust (the standard Kingdom Yuen joke). It naturally works tenfold and within this Lee Lik-Chi has started to take us on a mad journey where it's not about making sense of the plot but to have fun with whatever the filmmakers come up with. Especially so when the Chan couple swallow five pearls each while on the run from General Hu (Elvis Tsui) and each give birth to five adult children fairies (among them Law Kar-Ying and the kiddie duo from Shaolin Popey) with super-duper powers. One half of the children gets manipulated by the General and raised like dogs while the other half with mom tries to find dad who is now imprisoned by Hu. Utilizing very basic but a hefty amount of CG and a fair amount of big scale ideas, Ten Brothers doesn't demand much attention overall but is one of those "did they just do that"-experiences from Hong Kong where certainly pace is an expertise evident in the filmmakers. Throw in feces jokes and a few gory deaths and yet somehow it's all a family product. |
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