English Dubbed Version

Rated: <unknown>

Length: approx. 99 min. or 84 min. (depending on the source)

Main Cast: Jackie Chan, Richard Ng, Samo (Sammo) Hung, Yuen Biao, Sihelle Hu, Eric Tsang, Michiko Nishiwaki, Andy Lau, Stanley Fung, Bolo Yeung.

This is an oddball comedy that has Jackie in a co-star role. It’s quite funny, but maybe the only reason I think that is because I saw it fairly late at night.

Jackie (known as "Muscles") and his cop partner are in Tokyo (or somewhere in Japan) as undercover Hong Kong cops looking for a cop-gone-bad who’s stolen something. They find the guy at a train terminal and chase him (and his accomplice) into an amusement park where they fight some "ninja" that appear out of nowhere. They have an interesting fight and Jackie’s partner gets captured by the ninja.

Due to this untoward event, Jackie calls his superiors and says that he’ll need some new faces and suggests some gang from his past. I guess in Muscles past, he and another five guys were orphans who caused trouble and maybe did illegal activities before he became a cop. He also happened to send one of his buddies to jail (Samo Hung).

Samo is coerced into helping so he can get out of prison and he goes out to collect the rest of the gang. These people are all quite strange! One of the guys thinks he can cast spells, one thinks he’s suave (or something) and another is dumber than a dead squid. The spell guy is first shown carrying a duck and then trying to make it lay an egg by chanting "Lay and egg" three times. WEIRD! And strangely funny too. All the guys are collected doing something odd…usually they’re trying to steal something by any means possible.

Unfortunately, the plot is messed up! We waste a lot of time in scenes that are completely pointless. Case in point: the five members of the gang (Jackie is the sixth member and doesn’t show up for a while) are introduced to a chick that works for the cops. She’s to tell them their mission. These guys haven’t seen a girl in a while and immediately fall all over each other in a pathetic display. Later, at bed-time, two-to-four of them dress up in ninja outfits and tie the chick and the one guy without a costume together with rope. This goes on for something like 20 minutes!

There is another wasted series of scenes in a hotel lobby, in a hotel room, and in a hotel restaurant. They are funny, but they don’t push along the plot at all. However, it’s quite entertaining to watch them order using charades since they can’t speak Japanese.

Jackie shows up for a quick fight scene with Samo when Samo and the girl get ambushed in an apartment. This is cool because we finally see what Samo can do.

Then Samo et al (excluding Jackie, of course!) go and place bets where the baddies are. They use lots of money provided by Jackie and the cops. Anyway, they get invited into the bad guys hideout and eventually all of them are captured except for Samo who must get some large amount of money for some unexplained reason. (If there was a reason, I missed it…maybe to free his friends? But they weren’t captured then…hmmm)

Thus, Samo gets some more money from Jackie and goes back to the amusement park. Jackie is in a costume of a rag doll or something. Samo has to go into a haunted house place because it leads to the baddies place. Jackie follows and his voice is altered for the entire time he’s in the costume. He’s got an annoying high-pitched voice.

Needless to say, Jackie kicks some serious butt in this part. He fights costumed weirdoes in the haunted house as well as destroying dummies that jump out of nowhere. Eventually, he and Samo and everyone else in the gang, including the chick end up fighting the bad guys. This is pretty cool. Even Jackie’s cop partner is freed and gets in on it. Most of the action focuses on Jackie and Samo, but there’s an interesting cat fight between two chicks. The bad guy/girl is quite muscular and is scary in that respect.

OK. The good guys win. Now to give a list of good things and bad things:

I liked this movie. It’s not really a Jackie Chan movie though, since he’s not the principal star. However, it’s quite good and if you like Hong Kong humor, then you’ll like this!

SFX: N/A