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Published: 15 December, 2011
by DAN CARRIER

Directed by Wilson Yip
Certificate 12a

Rating: 3 Out Of 5 Stars

There has long been a sense in Chinese and Hong Kong film that their cultures’ rich story-telling history should be taken more seriously.

I have seen countless films about ghosts, ghouls, magical powers, people returning from the dead, and general other world hanky-panky, all done with a very straight face as if to make light of myths and legends is not really the done thing: it would be like the RSC playing Henry V for laughs.

So it was refreshing to watch this splendidly odd and rather ludicrous Hong Kong high school romp about generations of magicians using special powers to cause mischief, mayhem and mirth done with lashings of odd-ball humour.

We meet a university professor called Kang, who is actually a wizard, but one day loses his magical touch and finds it transmutes itself to one his students, a volleyball player called Macy (Karena Ng).

Then comes along a love interest and magic rival in the form of handsome student Ling Fung (Chun Wu) who wants to join forces with Macy, and what transpires is a big old scrap between various magically endowed people.

The special effects are a bit Ghostbusters at times but that just adds to the charm.

While I got a little lost occasionally as to what was going on and why, its overlying silliness meant it didn’t matter terribly – a ball of eco-magic-plasma would always appear and move things on sufficiently.

One particularly memorable sequence features an overweight kid, who spends his time being picked on, excelling at various events at the school’s sports day by being beaten up the backside by Macy’s magic.

Watching her plasma-zaps shuffle him into the lead in the 100 metres robs this film of any lingering vestiges of seriousness or self-respect. It is hugely preposterous and all the better for it.

This film gets the thumbs-up for sheer idiocy and interest – it is like a Chinese version of one of those American vampire TV series that seem to have gripped the imaginations of every teen in the western hemisphere.

It makes the content, at least, culturally interesting, even if the disjointed story is virtually impossible to follow (not helped by subtitles written in particularly tiny script).