Movie Review 32: On His Majesty's Secret Service

Title: On His Majesty's Secret Service (大内密探灵灵狗)

Director: Wong Jing

Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Normally, I would not be watching such a movie, but it was a long weekend and there were no interesting movies that I like to watch... I was weighing between District 9 and this movie and finally go for a comedic movie just to have some laughs. Surprisingly, there were still more than 10 people watching this movie in the cinema,,, I was really afraid of watching this movie all alone... some spooky films come to my mind as I ponder this :P.

This movie is about a plot to assassinate the Emperor and it is the job of the 12 Royal Guards to protect him as they fend of various attempts and plots to overthrow the Emperor. Heading the 12 Royal Guards is the Royal Dog (Louis Koo)( the rest of the Guardians are named according to the 12 Chinese animal zodiac) and he is the only one who doesn't know martial arts. However, his scientific discoveries is more than enough to garner him as one of the Royal Guardians.

As you all know, a movie by Wong Jing is mostly comedic, B-grade comedy, to be exact. I had to admit that it is a really funny movie but it is the same kind of gross and meaningless (mou lei tau) comedy as with his other movies. You would be saying a lot of 'duh' throughout the movie. I think it would have gotten more favourable reception if it came during Chinese New Year.

This movie has a lot of cast members and a lot of them are veterans in the film industry. However, it is obvious that a lot of the non so familiar faces are from China as they were speaking in Mandarin (dubbed in Cantonese) throughout the movie and you can see the difference in lips movement compared to the dubbed Cantonese.

At first I thought that it would be similar to Stephen Chow's '008', but apart from the concept, it is in not that similar... I mean, in '008' Stephen Chow actually managed to learn one martial arts move while Louis Koo is totally non-martial type throughout the movie.

Anyway, this movie while funny, is not really worth the RM10 ticket price. Try to catch it in Astro or TV during Chinese New Year to have a good laugh.

Observation: The martial arts skill of Faithful (Barbie Hsu) throughout the movie is non-consistent... at one time she was on par with the main villain of the movie and at another time she was defeated by the main villain's underling

Bottomline: Funny but not worth the ticket price

Bamboo Ranking: 2.5 / 5.0