A Little TLC(w): The Royal Scoundrel (1991)

Okay, so a dud like Love Me, Love My Money proves that my Tony Leung Chiu-wai bias isn’t impervious, but I know it is a factor.  How do I know this?  The Royal Scoundrel is most definitely not what you’d call a good movie, but so help me, I enjoyed it a lot.  This cheesy, frenetic mess was really entertaining to me, and I can honestly say I’m glad I watched it.

This action comedy features a pair of hapless cops (how hapless are they?  One of them carries his gun in a fanny pack!) who, for reasons I never quite grasped, are referred to as Beach Boy and Mrs. Chow (both are male, by the way.)  When they get a new boss – young, sharp, and strict – he makes it known that their careers are on the line if he doesn’t start seeing results soon.  Meanwhile, Beach Boy takes a shine to Yuk, a young woman he meets while working a case (nice professional boundaries, dude,) but any potential romance between them is jeopardized by his animosity toward his new boss wreaking havoc on his middling-at-best impulse control.

That’s kind of a sloppy plot summary, but that’s pretty much what we have to work with.  The film is quick, loud, and messy, with a strong dose of silly gags and some tonal dissonance.  Also, the romance is hampered by some weird gender stuff that feels dated even for 1991.  And yet, somehow, I still like it.  I kept sort of checking in with myself as I was watching it, going, “Wait, do I like this?  I think I like this.”  I can’t quite say what it is – maybe the fact that it’s so unapologetically everything that it is?  A lot of the humor, while goofy, is just on the right side of weird for me.  I particularly like the various jokes about the fake mailbox Beach Boy and Mrs. Chow set up to surveil a person of interest and the running gag in which producing their badges is a magic bullet that excuses them from anything.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai plays Beach Boy, and much like the film, even the performance isn’t all that good, I kind of like it anyway.  While Mrs. Chow is a sweet bungler, Beach Boy is super full of himself and easily slighted – a dangerous combination, particularly once Officer Lee, the hotshot new boss, arrives.  You can see him barely holding back the implosion every time something goes wrong on a case and Officer Lee chews them out for it.  At the same time, despite his general “I’m surrounded by idiots” attitude toward Mrs. Chow, he really does care about his partner and wouldn’t want to work with anyone else (when the widowed Mrs. Chow is temporarily indisposed, the self-centered Beach Boy doesn’t think twice about taking on the enormous handful of Mrs. Chow’s seven young children in the interim.)

And while, like I said, the performance is kind of shaky – mostly in that it’s over-the-top – Leung still has some excellent moments.  I think my biggest laugh of the film comes when Beach Boy and Mrs. Chow are getting dressed down early on.  Beach Boy talks and acts as though he’s completely in charge of the situation when the truth is anything but, and his take-charge grandstanding is really funny.

Recommend?

In General – A cautious maybe.  Silly fluff, but entertaining, too.  I think if you like the occasional dumb comedy and know what to expect going in, you might enjoy yourself.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Again, maybe.  Leung’s biggest feat here is letting Beach Boy remain pretty unlikable even while making him fairly engaging.

Warnings

Violence, sexual references, smoking/drinking, drug references, a little gross-out humor, and thematic elements.