Mr. Vampire II

The hopping vampires return as the sequel to the classic Mr. Vampire moves the setting from ancient China to modern-day Hong Kong, and includes a whole family of bloodsuckers. Inevitably, the little vampire comes into contact with a young brother and sister team who confuse him for an illegal Chinese immigrant. Lam Ching Ying returns in his trademark role as he attempts to control and safely transport the vampires to their graves..

This sequel is partially designed for children, with a long heartwarming scene of human children and kid vampire, and the rest is the usual mayhem featuring hopping vampires, some Kung fu and chaotic scenes. I don't mind the modern setting, it suits the story, and though it's not as good the first one, it's still fun, though it gets tiring towards the end.

April 2021

Mr Vampire 2 in my opinion is the weakest film is this Mr Vampire style genre of film, but saying that it is still very good.

Personally the modern day setting just takes a bit a way from it and most of the story follows little children.

Still plenty of likeable stuff and it stars Lam Ching Ying, Yuen Biao, Moon Lee, Billy Lau, Woo Fung and Chung Fat.

Just about 9 out 10.

The original MR VAMPIRE was a ground-breaking all time classic. The sequel doesn't try to match it, and has next to nothing in common with it, other than the appearance of hopping vampires. This is a wise move, because the original was simply perfection. MR VAMPIRE 2 is entertaining but not in the same league as its predecessor.

There are some jokes that are just not funny (the formaldehyde fight scene) and some annoying sub-plots (the "cute" vampire kid), but in the end these can't detract from the fact that this is insane Hong-Kong action cinema, which completely wipes the floor with anything Hollywood could ever produce.

I don't mean that as a knock on "Mr. Vampire". I thought that movie as was pretty good. It's just that "Mr. Vampire II" is a little bit better. "Mr. Vampire II" has a lot of goodwill going for it. The cast is likeable and the jokes are funny but the movie does skip a beat here and there. That long slow motion stuff in the middle was funny at first but then it goes on forever. The stuff with the kids, however, is fun.

This wasn't a good film. I'm sure there are those that have nostalgic feelings for this film, but compared with the first film, this film just didn't live up to it at all. Other than having Chinese vampires in the film and Ching-Ying Lam returning (in another role) this film belongs in the category of sequels that got very little to do with the original. It was also made just one year after the original, which makes sense when you see the end result, since this film feels very rushed.

The plot is simple enough, some graverobbers/archaeologist find a cave with three vampires, one male, one female and a kid - a family. The baddies takes the bodies with them and plans on selling them on the black market, but ends up making a mess and release them out into society, where they end up causing havoc, sort of. The vampire kid gets separated from its parents and ends up befriending two normal kids, play around with them and have a fun time.

I made it sound quite easy now, but the plot really is all over the place, The first 30 minutes is all about the graverobbers and how they end up failing with their task to both sell the bodies or just keeping them secure, I had to check the time because I wondered why Ching-Ying Lam hadn't showed up yet, since he was supposed to have the lead role in this film (or that's what I thought at least.) This is more of an ensemble cast film, with many different plots to follow at the same time, but when it doesn't have any interesting characters or any cool world-building as the first film, you got not much left to cheer for with this film. There's not much fighting in the film, which isn't necessary anyway, it's a vampire film, not a kung fu film, but to have a whole side plot with the kid vampire just made this film so awkwardly sweet and not fitting to the rest of the film at all.

The part that made me give this 4 stars instead of 5 was when Ching-Ying Lam broke the fourth wall and told the police his qualifications about his Master Sammo (obviously Sammo Hung) and then listing previous better films than this one that he's been part of (Spooky Encounters, Mr Vampire etc.). It might've worked in Airplane, but not for a film like this. I will most likely not revisit this film since it does very little for the genre. I did not hate it, I was just very disappointed in what it was.

Don't watch it unless you really feel like you need to have seen all of the Chinese Vampire films. But again, this film does very little for the genre and is easily forgotten.