Rating:

5

AKA: The 60 Million Dollar Man

Year of release: 1995

Genre: comedy

Director: Raymond Yip

Writer: Wong Jing

Action director: Dion Lam

Producer: Wong Jing

Stars: Stephen Chow, Gigi Leung, Ng Man-Tat, Elvis Tsui, Tang Siu Chuen, Pauline Suen, Manfred Wong, Cheng Cho, Alvina Kong

Rated II for crude humor

DVD Information

Company: Mei Ah

Format: widescreen

Languages: Cantonese, Mandarin

Subtitles: Chinese, English

Extras: trailer, databank

Notes: This is a "remastered" DVD, but besides some new menu screens, not too much has changed since the previous release. The print still shows some wear and the 5.1 sound mix has that "echo" effect typical of early HK DVD releases. At least the subtitles are no longer burnt into the picture.

Related links:

Wong Jing biography
Stephen Chow biography
Movie Review index
Main Page

The Sixty Million Dollar Man

In The Sixty Million Dollar Man, Chow plays his usual ne'er-do-well spolied brat, who is attending college in Hawaii and gets away with all sorts of hijinks because his father is the director of the school. After he has a rendezvous with the wife (Pauline Suen) of a Yakuza boss (Cheng Cho), he is shredded to pices by a bomb. A mad scientist (Elvis Tsui) manages to save Chow's brain and creates a new body that has the abilty to morph into anything, that is, if they're household objects. Chow uses his new abilities to try and tame a school full of unruly kids and woo the woman of his dreams (Gigi Leung) in the process, all the while staying a step ahead of the Yakuza who have returned to finish the job.

Even though he is considered box office gold, Stephen Chow has not been immune to some clunkers, and The Sixty Million Dollar Man is one of them. It's not a horrible movie by any means -- there are some very funny bits during the proceedings -- and the picture's HK$35 million box office take would be envied by many Hong Kong film-makers. It's just that it lacks that certain spark of inventiveness and manic energy that marks Chow's best work.

Most of the comedy in The Sixty Million Dollar Man just seems forced. There are a few sequences which come off a just plain derivative instead of the parody the film-makers were supposedly going for. Of particular note is a long scene where Chow plays off Jim Carrey's The Mask. Even though Jim Carrey is a talented comedic actor, The Mask worked more because of the special effects rather than Carrey's trademark "rubber face". The problem with The Sixty Million Dollar Man is that the special effects, for lack of a better work, suck. I realize that this is a ten-year-old Hong Kong movie, but to call some of the special effects here "amateurish" would be an understatement. With the lack of quality effects, a lot of the scenes (including a Terminator 2 bit) come off as cheap imitations. Even the parts (such as a Pulp Fiction take-off) that don't depend on special effects come off feeling flat.

Still, The Sixty Million Dollar Man does offer a few good laughs during its' running time (mostly with Chow's interactions with his long-running sidekick, Ng Man-Tat), and fans of Stephen Chow should enjoy the proceedings. But, ultimately, The Sixty Million Dollar Man lacks the spit-and-polish (or just outright chutzpah) that Chow's stronger work demonstrates, and it's for that reason that this reviewer marks it as a stunningly average entry in what has for the most part been one of the strongest outputs from a Hong Kong actor over the past twenty years.