True Love (2000)

Pizza delivery boy Sam (Sam Lee) has a crush on his dream girl Lam Siu Suet (Siu Suet). She's an aspiring singer and her manager Leo is pitching her to record company execs as the "star of the new millennium", image makeover pending. But just when Leo's preparing to launch her debut album to the masses, Suet refuses to sleep with him. Leo in turn ditches her and releases her recordings straight to the discount bins. And so begins a huge downhill slide for Suet, as she strikes out on pills, entertains ideas of karaoke hostess work and sinks into all-round depression.

In comes Sam. He's one of the few Hongkongers that actually bought a copy of Suet's album. But he's not going to have his prized CD autographed by his idol until she sings on stage. Helped along by the surprising amount of cash he keeps in his bank accounts, and his general goodwill and sharp advice, Sam picks Suet and her brother Wing Wing out of the depths they've sunk into. "One failure doesn't mean forever," he says before finding Suet a new producer - ace composer Jack Lee - to help her reach superstardom. The man works wonders and, sure enough, by film's end our starlet is on stage; the audience swinging their glowsticks to her emotion-packed performance.

True Love goes strong on the melodrama, packing in the mush and emotion into, and surrounding, Sam and Suet's relationship. The old "Quality, not quantity" adage would have gone down well at the script development stage. To their credit, the filmmakers restrain themselves from throwing Sam Lee into his goofball routine all the time. Unfortunately their remaining humour attempts still hurt the flow at times - a particularly irritating moment being an actor playing, rather than spoofing, Eric Tsang Chi-wai. True Love left me feeling unimpressed, though it did manage to occasionally capitalise on one theme - the music industry. A few snide comments on the music industry get popped in, not least including a producer suggesting Suet be pitched to the masses as "something new", like a "mixture of Sammi, GiGi and Cecilia" [existing singers]. Later, a record store clerk isn't sure where the Siu Suet CDs are displayed in his shop, citing that all local singers simply look good and sound the same anyway.

A True Love painted billboard stapled up at Wanchai's Imperial Theatre.

Credits:

Directed by Ivan Lai
Starring Sam Lee and Siu Suet
Cameos by Joe Junior and Helena Law Lan