Love Matters By Jack Neo and Gilbert Chan

For those who have been to a GV cinema recently, you just might chance upon the poster to an upcoming Chinese New Year movie titled Love Matters.


It's actually a co-production with Grand Brilliance from across the Causeway, following the production formula as seen in Ah Long Pte Ltd, and with the return of Lai Ming in motherly roles seen in that movie, as well as Money No Enough 2, and this one of course. But what I thought was slightly disturbing, was the billing (or not for that matter) given to co-director Gilbert Chan. Granted that Gilbert Chan has done only one local feature length movie to date - S11 - I thought by means of sharing directorial responsibilities, you do also credit your co-director as well, instead of having it billed simply as 'A Jack Neo Film" on the marquee? Can't it be "A Jack Neo-Gilbert Chan Film", which of course will leave people scratching their heads as to who that other person is, but that's the point, isn't it? And yes, I know the "Jack Neo" branding will sell the film of course.

Trailer:

That aside, I thought the trailer here was humming along quite plainly, and felt that Ekechai's Wedding Of The Year starring Fann Wong and Christopher Lee might get an upper hand in their head-to-head Lunar New Year release. After all, there isn't any major star billing here save for the usual J-Team folks like Mark Lee, this time as an effeminate Thai (1"41' to 1"44"), and by the looks of it, major product placement will be back, given the ready glimpse of OCBC (seen at 1"20' to 1"22'), recycled jokes seen at 1"45', and melodramatic moments such as that at the 51' mark also will raise goosebumps.

But I guess the trailer here available on YouTube, is that there's more Hokkien than the version seen in the cinemas, and I hope that we don't get the predominantly Mandarin version, with the Dialect version heading to Malaysia for release instead. And which part was the clincher for me? The last 20 seconds:

"When the phone ring "Green Green", I Pink up the phone and say Yellow, Blue is this? White do you want? You don't Purplely call me. You make me angry, I will not call you Black!"

LOL! It's so silly it works, delivered in deadpan Hui Ge fashion!