Summer Holiday (2000)

Production house Golden Harvest scored an unexpected winner when it rolled out Fly Me To Polaris in 1999. Deftly packaged to have viewers weeping as if on cue, the film scored remarkably well in the cinemas. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the production company have brought back director Jingle Ma after his fun Tokyo Raiders action interlude and have reunited him with Fly Me To Polaris Taiwanese co-lead Richie Jen. The setting is Malaysia...

Jen plays More More Tea, a beach bum with an odd English name in direct translation. One day his care-free life of lounging on the beach, singing with mates and breaking up weddings is interrupted by a new arrival from Hong Kong. She's called Summer Koo (Sammi Cheng), and she's been ditched by her man and fired by her boss. Years ago she'd helped out her cousin by buying half of the beach and now, with little left except a Happy Valley flat and a friend called Daisy, she's visiting her idyllic investment.

Unlike the regular holidaymakers, Summer hasn't travelled all that distance to frolic among the palms. She wants to sell the beach quick and sail a boatload of cash back to Hong Kong. The fly in the ointment is More, who holds the other 50 percent stake. He calls the sandy environs home and isn't willing to sell up. Each time Summer tries to talk business with him, he leaps into the sea. It'll be tough talking him out of his home, and therein arrives much of the plot. And much of the remainder, had you not guessed it already, hinges on More and Summer falling for each other.

As with Okinawa Rendez-Vous, playing Hong Kong theatres in the weeks before, Summer Holiday is an eye pleasing summer diversion. When the film heads down south, the surrounds are enticing, colourful and lively. Colour spills out from the clothes to the buildings, and life's so laid-back that it's a calm visual change for the Hong Kong moviegoer. Against the lush backdrop, it's surprising that Summer Holiday as a whole can be somewhat unsatisfying.

Sammi Cheng certainly looks nice under the camera's eye but is far less appealing as Summer Koo. Unfortunately, Summer is an unpleasant sort. She's the kind of person who has no qualms of deceiving and playing with the emotions of someone, hoping to strip him of his [relatively] unspoilt tropical home for a fast buck. That makes her a pretty ill meaning lady, if you ask me, and it's not easy feel sympathy even when her more vulnerable side comes out. And it also adds a challenge to accepting the romance angle, unless More is just desperate after too many rejections when roaming the beach with his guitar.

Richie Jen also looks good in the sun, and his acting here is more impressive than in Fly Me To Polaris with the tropical atmosphere allowing a more playful persona. He whips out the guitar for a few Mandopop songs too. The letdown when he's speaking is the jarring and inappropriate dubbed Cantonese voice he's given. Amazingly, the first spoken lines in Summer Holiday go to him and that voice, and it made for a poor first impression. Wishful thinking would have him speak in his native tongue and see his origins incorporated into the script. Still on the cast, a notably irritating addition is some girl called Yau Yau. She's a British tourist who comes to the beach looking for More and just won't go away. Her part is insignificant and serves only to add someone's idea of a teenage cutie to the sun drenched proceedings.

Summer Holiday hand-painted billboard on the Imperial Cinema in Wanchai

Credits:

Directed by Jingle Ma Chor-sing
Starring Sammi Cheng, Richie Jen (Richie Ren), Tan Kheng-seong and Vincent Kok