This
bachelorette party movie might not be funnier than Bridesmaids or Rough Night (although
for all we know it is), but it can certainly kick those other movies’ butts.
Largely, that is thanks to two co-stars with not insignificant screen time: the
leather-clad henchwoman played by Elly Nguyen and Iron Mike Tyson. The
bride-to-be and her two bickering besties are pretty clueless, but Tyson obviously
had fun shooting his scenes with them in Barbara Wong Chun-chun’s Girls vs Gangsters (a.k.a. Girls 2, trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.
Xiwen
was the sob sister of the quartet of friends introduced in the original
Taipei-set Girls, so her engagement
is a really big deal. Obviously, her friends have to celebrate with a
destination bachelorette party in Vietnam, where Xiaomei will wangle them
invites to swanky parties, but never actually spend time with them, because she
is supposedly too busy shooting a movie, Of course, nobody gossips about her in
her absence, because bridesmaids never do that sort of thing, right?
In
this case, rivals Kimmy and Jialan are too busy clawing at each other. Initially,
they both compete for the attentions of the mobbed-up funder of Xiaomei’s
movie, but Jialan will be okay with losing that one. Long story short, Kimmy
loses his heirloom ruby ring and beats a hasty retreat with Xiwen and Jialan.
However, when they wake up the next morning, they find themselves naked on the
beach, handcuffed to a mysterious briefcase—and Xiwen has a strange man’s face
tattooed on the back of her neck.
Speaking
of tattoos, the next person they meet is Dragon, a former boxing champ who now
runs a beachfront lounge. Guess who plays him? He will help cloth the ladies
and facilitate their getaway from the gangsters’ goons. From there, things
really become random, as the film starts borrowing plot points from Brewster’s Millions: they must spend a
briefcase full of gold bars in twenty-four hours, or else. At least, there are
some comical moments involving the difficult disposal of unwieldy precious
metal.
It
is all pretty shticky, but the sight of Tyson bogeying down with his cute
co-stars during the surreal end-credit montages, it is almost worth the price
of admission. Believe it or not, he has okay chemistry with Janine Chang
Chun-ning’s Jialan. Seriously, Tyson is around considerably longer than a mere
cameo, but viewers will still wish the film gave him and Chang more time
together. Ivy Chen pouts like nobody’s business, but she still manages to keep Xiwen
relatively endearing, while Fiona Sit plays the tough-talking Kimmy to the
hilt. Alas, Nguyen is an impressive presence, but she should have been given
more action responsibilities.
Basically,
Wong pitches the comedy at a level roughly equivalent to Xu Zheng’s Lost buddy movies, falling somewhat
closer to the slapsticky Lost in Thailand
than the more heartfelt Lost in Hong Kong. The female buddy film might still hold novelty on the Mainland, but
the screechiness and cattiness will likely feel dated to Western audiences. Best
left to expat bachelorette parties and self-conscious Mike Tyson fans, Girls vs Gangsters opens tomorrow (3/9)
in New York, at the AMC Empire.