Flashback: It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World (1987) – Lunar New Year blockbuster vividly captures the Hong Kong cinema aura
Comedy masterpiece a reminder of the Hong Kong psyche 10 years before city’s return to Chinese sovereignty and how materialism, greed and housing aspirations have long been its signature tunes
Despite the holiday never being invoked in the course of its 95 minutes, one would be hard-pressed to find a movie that better captures the Hong Kong celluloid aura of the Lunar New Year than this 1987 blockbuster.
What director-scriptwriter Clifton Ko Chi-sum lacked in motion-picture technique was more than compensated for by an uncanny knack for finding humour in the protagonists’ materialism – and by extension Hong Kong’s – as well as the narrative’s ability to transform naked greed into an admirable family trait.
The mad world depicted is a reflection, albeit highly exaggerated, of the city’s psyche a decade before the handover, and not without relevance today. Uncle Bill (Bill Tung Biu), a television announcer who somehow still qualifies for public housing, and his wife, Aunty Lydia (Lydia Sum Tin-ha), are archetypal would-be tycoons longing for that most quintessential of Hong Kong desires: more spacious accommodation.
The younger generation is represented by a trio of daughters: a budding beauty (Elsie Chan Yik-see), a slightly rebellious teen (Loletta Lee Lai-chen) and a no-nonsense tween (Pauline Kwan Pui-lam). Their predicaments serve to illustrate the central question of whether winning the Mark Six lottery is a blessing or a curse.
The milieu of the cramped housing estate forms an unexpectedly realistic counterpoint to the dream sequences and fanciful vignettes of the upper crust environs to which the family aspires. Few characters display many admirable qualities, yet the proceedings are so good-natured that a viewer is hard-put to disdain even the kidnappers who snatch one of the sisters.