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Edmund Lee

3.5/5 stars
A woman with a severe gambling addiction marries a man with an over-the-top aversion to people who gamble in this Lunar New Year comedy from writer-director Andy Lo Yiu-fai.
Lo shows a gift for nonsensical humour after taking a more sophisticated approach to contemplating family ties in his first two films, Happiness and Once in a Blue Moon.
Charlene Choi Cheuk-yin plays Ching, a pathological gambler who got her start when her gambling addict mother brought her into the world, before abandoning her and her younger brother, Ming (Mirror band member Stanley Yau Sze-chun), leaving Ching to provide for both with her burgeoning gambling skills.


Just when she is about to throw herself in front of a car to extort money after losing one too many times, Ching is stopped by Jing (Louis Cheung Kai-chung), the fourth-generation owner of a struggling preserved fruit business.
The two get hitched in no time – even though Jing, who hates gamblers with a passion, stays oblivious to his wife’s predicament.
My Best Bet is amusing but fairly unrefined in its first half, where Lo peppers the story with cartoonish scenes of Ching’s withdrawal symptoms.
While she has enrolled herself in a treatment centre to quit gambling behind her new husband’s back, this doesn’t stop her from hallucinating about mahjong and card games wherever she goes.

Somewhat surprisingly, it is the introduction of a deceptively hackneyed villain – an uberwealthy and narcissistic male chauvinist of Chinese-Korean descent named Ian (Chu Pak-hong, who recently impressed in The Last Dance) – that adds a touch of unpredictability to the narrative and gradually sparks the film into life.
Ian has been holding a grudge against Jing since the two were primary-school classmates, and he sees Jing’s failing family business and his younger sister, Ying (Jeannie Ng Ka-yan), as easy targets for his revenge. But Lo’s screenplay blindsides the viewers when the initially sensible Ying suddenly throws herself at Ian, despite having realised how toxic he is.
It is in the film’s third act that Lo truly shows his hand, however, as My Best Bet becomes snappier, wittier and more inventive in its comedy writing.
When the action culminates in a showdown inside Ian’s illegal casino, it is not the thrill of winning card games but rather the lampooning of conventional characterisation that proves to be the filmmaker’s ace.

Lo’s big achievement lies in the way he subverts his audience’s expectations about the “good” and “bad” guys as if he has always recognised how pointless it is to rehash the formula of traditional gambling comedies.
The shots in which Chu breaks the fourth wall to complain about the filmmaker’s decision to cast him unfairly as a villain is pure comedy gold.
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A man with an aversion to gamblers marries a gambling addict in Andy Lo’s comedy. The writer-director shows a gift for nonsensical humour.


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Review

Review | My Best Bet movie review: Charlene Choi, Louis Cheung battle gambling addiction in comedy

A man with an aversion to gamblers marries a gambling addict in Andy Lo’s comedy. The writer-director shows a gift for nonsensical humour.