I finally got the chance recently to catch this remake of the classic 10 years ago. And wow, this film almost made me drown in my own tears...
The Critics
As far as I remembered, the critics for this film was REALLY bad. Some even went as far as to give it 1 out of 5 stars. I don't really remember the exact reviews, but I believe most of the criticism were about its crude/bad jokes.
Now. Honestly. For those who think this is a bad movie because of its bad jokes, then you have miss out what is truly great about this film. This film is more about the tears than the laughter, unlike the original Money No Enough.
Look past the crude jokes, look past the bad effects. They are just the superficial and secondary.
The only other reason I can think of for the bad reviews: because the reviewers doesn't understand Hokkien. Maybe. Nowadays those "editors" of magazines are mostly "ang-moh" addicted to those "Hollywood $100 million budget movies with tons of CGI", so I can probably understand why they give this movie 1 star.
The Laughter
Actually, as much as I can recall, I didn't really laugh a lot throughout the whole movie. Some portions, yes, but not from the start till end like most of Jack Neo's films.
The ERP part was damn impressive of course. I love Mark Lee's "Other country government is take money from their citizens, our government is use 'suck' one". Then the whole animation about millions of cash flowing into our national treasury. Just love that part.
The only other scenes which really made me laugh was Ah Nam promoting the "Flower Powder" and the portion where the mother kept asking his son whether he has eaten. Haha.
The Tears
When you are down and out, everyone will leave you: Your friends, even your best and closest friends will leave you. Even your own brothers, your own siblings may leave you.
But there is one person that will always stand by you no matter what.
... Some couple of simple scenes that touched me...
1) The old ladies consoles the mother. However, she explained that she is feeling down not because all her life savings were taken by her 3 sons, but because she doesn't have enough money to help them.
2) When Henry was in a bad state, he asked his mum if she'll look down on him since he is not rich anymore. The mother told him whether he's rich or not, he's still her son.
And of course, the big scene at the Old Folks home. The whole build up, from start to end is done beautifully. The portion when the mother saw the sad faces of the other old folks, turned around and saw her son running away from her... whew...
I cried so much at this scene.
...
This was later followed by a scene which leave a lot to think about. The 3 sons prayed for their mother to go...
From a moral point of view, this is wrong and totally unfilial. But are the 3 of them really unfilial sons?
It is easy to be filial during the good times.
But when you can't even feed yourself and your family, what is the cost of true filial piety?
...
At the end of the story, there was this dramatic scene where Jack Neo had to choose between his daughter and his mother. It is interesting to note the response of the various characters here, especially the wife.
Her love for her daughter is just like the mother love for their sons. She'll do anything to save her daughter, so there is nothing "wrong" with the part about her saying that the mother is old and useless, and they should save her daughter.
Again, I cried so hard here.
And that's the end of what I have to say about this movie.
There are some bad portions, especially the effects. Some are really badly done, like the car accident (extremely fake looking, would have been better if they just use real props). They also end it kinda abruptly after the final scene, and I think there were some minor stuffs they didn't wrapped up.
Other then that: If you understand Hokkien, and you can look past this movie being a comedy, I don't see how you can give this 1 out of 5.
Rating: 4 / 5
(Watch For The Tears, Not The Laughter)
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