Writer: Ezekiel Lee Zhiang Yang

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Watch this if you liked: "Money No Enough", "Just Follow Law"

If Fann Wong's character was asked by her mum to "give half ball like Manchester United" to attract more men (for those in the know), the movie as a whole gives even less in lasting entertainment pleasure. "Ah Long Pt. Ltd." is the sort of regional comedy that does makes you laugh - that's not the contestation. It's just that the frequency of sidetracking, cheap FX and prolonged periods of tedium make "Ah Long" a disappointment for anybody who enjoyed Jack Neo gems like "Just Follow Law".

While the movie starts quite promisingly - Mark Lee in Village People gay costumes doing jazzercise and whatnot - it takes a steep dive into the vast region of Bore somewhere near the last third. It is probably then when the Hokkien-specific banter starts losing its charm and when its characters start looking a little silly because the hollowness of the plot is starting to show.

Fann Wong plays a badass "gangsterina" who marries Mark Lee's effeminate dance instructor character to whip up a two-hour excuse of a story. Nobody is asking for a laugh riot. Neo's films have always been undercurrent social commentary with plenty of idiosyncratic Singaporeana thrown in for good measure, but even giggles are few and far between this time. While "Just Follow Law" and "Ah Long" are similar in accessibility to those of us this side of the causeway (funny that some of it were shot in Malaysia), the latter does not have the same sort of comedic appeal. "Ah Long" suffers from an uneven direction because we are too often caught up in elaborate fight sequences and unnecessary special effects, taking away the need to produce the quality lines that we know Jack Neo is capable of. For every joke that "Ah Long" manages a giggle, there are 20 that don't.

So here we even have a bunch of models and radio deejays filling in for the supporting roles, obviously failing as well where Fann Wong and Mark Lee did. It's not that the lead pair are bad actors. In fact, they kept the story going for as much as they could. It's just that the contrived, disjointed ideas have become boring enough for us to lose interest in their fate. It is even more disappointing to see that a lot of effort was put in to make the film, considering half the budget would've probably sufficed if a less ambitious product were conceived earlier.

"Ah Long" is a commercial hit in Singapore, drawing loud laughter everywhere during the Chinese New Year just gone. Here, it's best highlighted as a two-hour telemovie with 20 or 30 tummy tickles on either side of a scene with Fann Wong's bare butt showing - which probably isn't even hers.

Cinema Online, 23 September 2008