Bao bei dang jia

Seeing how juvenile, farcical and downright nonsensical 'From Vegas to Macau III' was, it makes perfect sense that Wong Jing's next movie would be no less than a kids' movie. Oh yes, even though he isn't credited as director, his fingerprints are all over the equally scattershot and infantile 'Girl of the Big House', not least because he wrote and produced it and has appointed one of his regular deputies Aman Chang (of other Wong Jing scripted- and produced- efforts such as 'The Conman 2002' and 'Flirting in the Air') to direct it on his behalf. Even when approached with the lowest of expectations, there is little redeeming about this barely coherent mess, which aims for a contemporary fairy tale by way of 'Home Alone' and fails on every conceivable level.

It takes no longer than the opening credits for one to sense that something is quite amiss. To introduce us to the titular protagonist are the three members of the Cantopop band Grasshopper, who by way of a CG-animated musical sequence tell of a little girl named Bowie (Angela Wang) born with a silver spoon who spends her days in a big house akin to a modern-day castle while her parents (Francis Ng and Miriam Yeung) travel around the world for business. Not only is the ditty awkward and unwieldy, it behooves the filmmakers to use the same technique sometime along the course of the movie in order not to make the opening completely out of place, which ultimately precipitates another misplaced ditty in the middle of the film and a closing song-and- dance sequence as cringe-worthy for the audience as it is for the band members as well as the actors obligated to perform in it.

Indeed, that pained expression is clearly written on the faces of Ng and Yeung, who seem to have had their own respective debts to re-pay to Wong Jing in order to have agreed to lend their names to this misfire. Yeung appears for no more than 15 minutes in the whole film, her most substantial contribution being engaging with the baddies in a spoof 'Fruit Ninja' sequence after being revealed as a former TVB 'kung fu' actress. On the other hand, Ng has to put up with much more ignominy, taking on dual roles as both Bowie's father as well as the latter's ne'er-do-well older brother Dave, who comes up with the plan to rob his own family's house in order to retrieve a valuable painting which he believes he was rightfully denied. Ng is too consummate an actor to slum his way through, but it is truly depressing watching him endure the silly pratfalls his character is made to do, like take nibbles off a chicken drumstick his nemesis is holding while being tied up kneeling on the floor.

If it isn't immediately clear from the trailer, let's just say that the curly-haired Dave isn't the ultimate villain; oh no, he's in fact a man with a conscience who has been misguided by his envy of his more successful younger brother Neil (a la Bowie's father), and it is no secret that Dave will come to realise the folly of his ways before the end credits. Instead, the real baddie falls to Jim Chim's Mr Brutal, who with half a head of black and half a head of white hair as well as a parrot in tow just about screams caricature. It is Mr Brutal who makes use of Dave's two accomplices (played by Lo Fan and Mars) to make the jump on the latter, not only to burgle the entire house but also to kidnap Bowie in order to ransom her wealthy parents, thus setting the proceedings as a cat-and-mouse chase around the house as the trailer so promises.

In truth, it takes close to half the movie for the kidnappers to finally enter the house, the first half littered with throwaway sequences such as Bowie being courted in her international school by a mischievous boy named Benji or an extended chase around a Pottinger Street market to evade a pair of kidnappers (Lo Fan again and Tony Ho). The latter is intended to introduce Bowie to three friends – Holly (The Bodyguard's Jacqueline Chan), Donald (Dragon Blade's Jozef Liu) and Ah Man (Wong Yuet Yuk) – who will turn up at her house to celebrate the occasion of her birthday just as the kidnapping is underway, but Wong Jing's script is too daft and Aman Chang's direction too mechanical to make the smart-kids-versus- bumbling adults premise pop.

Worse, Wong Jing isn't yet done with his obsession of robotic butlers, and so Bowie gets a fat red round one called Wiley that her parents get her as her birthday present. Whereas 'From Vegas to Macau III's' Robot Skinny could make coffee with his fingertips, Wiley is conveniently retrofitted to be an ice cream machine when Bowie wants one or her personal bodyguard when she needs one. Nonetheless, Wiley's presence as well as his supposed 'combat mode' is entirely superfluous, seeing as how he is literally tied up most of the time and has been written to run out of battery just when he is put back into action. And yet, considering how much of Wong Jing's ideas on script rarely develop further than brain farts, it isn't too surprising that Wiley turns out pointless.

It has sometimes become too easy to slam a Wong Jing film, but we dare say that we tried as far as possible to cast aside any preconceived bias we had of the movie, which only made it more infuriating that the 'Girl of the Big House' pretty much confirms what we feared worst about the filmmaker's tendencies. Not even for kids we say – you'll be much better off watching re-runs of 'Home Alone' than this copycat dud.