This entry in the popular series intially holds some promise, especially considering the cast involved here. But it quickly drops the fast-paced and high-powered "vampire busting" usually featured in the movies in favor of a dopey "homage" to E.T. featuring an extremely annoying kid vampire, much to the detriment of the film, and possibly the viewer's sanity as a whole.

The movie kicks off with a professor (Chung Faat) and his two fumbling sidekicks coming across a family of vampires, who are being held at bay by Taoist talismen placed on their heads. The professor gets the bright idea to try and sell the vampires, but they get away after the talismen fall off their heads. The kid ends up being "adopted" by a pair of talkative chunky kids, and the parents going on to raise havoc on the streets of Hong Kong, with Taoist priest Lam Ching-Ying and his assistant Yuen Biao in hot pursuit.

On one hand, viewers might appreciate that the film-makers tried to do something different with the vampire genre, with the modern setting and more of an emphasis on family-friendly antics versus horror. The problem is that these different takes simply do not work. There was obviously a very low budget at work here, and as such, the modern setting is not used very well at all. One might get images of vampires rampaging around Hong Kong, but there's only one scene featuring that sort of the action, with most of the movie taking place in a couple of averagely boring indoor locations.

And as for the plot element involving the kid? Initially, it is a bit cute, but it goes on for far too long, going so far as to dominate the first half of the movie. By the time a musical montage (complete with sickly-sweet song seemingly ripped from a Cantonese version of a Kidz Bop album) played on the screen, it took all this reviewer's willpower to not hit the stop button and permanently end the misery.

The over-emphasis on what really should have just been a short sub-plot ends up making the actors look short-shrifted, Yuen Biao in particular. Did he piss off Sammo Hung enough to make him think it would be a good idea to make one of the movie's central action scenes take place in fake slow motion via a fight done under the influence of sedative? Again, it's a neat idea at first, but it is stretched out for far too long, and loses the viewer in the process.

There are a few bright spots present here. Some of the comedy actually works, such as a series of jokes about the fact that Lam Chin-Ying's character is named Lam Ching-Ying, and he starts listing off previous vampire movies as qualifications for him to be a vampire buster. Also, there are elements that focus on the vampire buster that are pretty fun. But it comes off as too little, too late to save the film as a whole. It's a testament to the popularity of the actors and the genre that several more Mr. Vampire movies were made after this -- but Part 2 is really just for completists only.

RATING: 4