How to Meet the Lucky Stars

I had actually never seen the 1996 Hong Kong comedy "How to Meet the Lucky Stars" before now in 2023, as I stumbled upon the movie by random chance. And of course there was no doubt about me sitting down to watch it as I have a special fondness of the Hong Kong cinema.

And I figured that with the likes of Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, Eric Tsang, Richard Ng, Stanley Sui-Fan Fung and Fui-On Shing on the cast list that I was guaranteed to be in for an enjoyable movie.

However, it turned out that writers Chi-Wai Lee, Ivy Lee and Ping Kwong Lee only managed to put together a semi-enjoyable script for director Frankie Chan to bring to life on the screen. The storyline in the movie was just a tad too plain for my liking, focusing a bit too much on the card playing aspect and forgetting about the comedy.

The acting performances in the movie were fair enough, archetypical mid-1990s Hong Kong stuff actually. Just a shame that such a good cast ensemble didn't have more contents to work with and bring to the screen.

This wasn't a movie that really appealed all that much to me, so it turned out that I hadn't exactly been missing out on a milestone in the Hong Kong cinema by not watching it before after 27 years of its release.

My rating of "How to Meet the Lucky Stars" lands on a four out of ten stars.

In this final film of the "Five Lucky Stars" series, Supt. Walter Tso (Tat-wah Cho) hires the "Five Lucky Stars" (Sammo Hung, Eric Tsang, Kiu Wai Miu, Stanley Fung and Richard Ng) to help the daughter of cheated gambler king Lui Tin (Kuan Tai Chen) defeat the swindling Sheung Kun Fan-Fa (Suet-Fa Kong) in the ultimate gambling match.

This film starts off slow with the painfully noticeable absence of Sammo Hung, who doesn't really appear on screen until the second half of the film; therefore, his Buddhist monk cousin, Leung (Vincent Lau), temporary takes his spot on the team. The plot takes a while to pick up steam, with just scenes of the very showy gambling teacher (Pei-Pei Cheng) teaching the Lucky Stars how to play cards in order to enter the tournament.

It appears the film tried to capitalize on the "God of Gamblers" movies hype of the late 80s and early 90s, but resulted in some goofy jokes and nonsensical comedy. But as usual, the action scenes toward the end were entertaining. The villainess was OK, beauty queen Françoise was a little air-headed but not a bad female lead and Fastbuck's cousin Leung was pretty redundant in the movie and served no real purpose.

Overall, the movie is just one big slapstick fest with the gambling backdrop. There are some entertaining stuff here and there, especially the gambling matches and the action scenes, but the series really runs out of steam by this movie and as the ending credits role, I think it gives the series an appropriate send-off.

Grade C-