My Lucky Stars (1985)

PG-13...and that's mostly for some pretty 1980s casual sexism, often bordering on sexual assault.  Yes, this is a movie where kung fu plays a not-insignificant role.  But mostly, I'm more uncomfortable with a lot of the sexual humor.  If you want to get the exact tone of My Lucky Stars, think Pepe LePew from Looney Tunes.  Like, it really doesn't hold up, especially when it comes to live action.  I don't know if anyone dies.  I think there are some vulgar jokes.  It's weird how I just watched it, and none of the vulgar stuff stuck.  

DIRECTOR:  Sammo Kam-Bo Hung

I broke my own rules again.  It tends to be the point of the opening paragraph to build momentum for writing the rest of this blog.  Well, I remembered that one of my students is doing her midterm project on Jackie Chan, so I offered to bring in as many Jackie Chan movies as I could get a hold of.  Well, I realized that I should get my butt in gear if she's going to have time to watch all this stuff.  The crazy part is that it is bananas that Criterion included My Lucky Stars in the Jackie Chan: Emergence of a Superstar box set because this, 100% is a Lucky Stars movie...not a Jackie Chan movie.

Like, he's in it.  He starts the movie.  He ends the movie.  But there's, like, 49 minutes where his character isn't seen or even discussed.  By the way, My Lucky Stars may act as a cautionary tale about how I shouldn't write about movies without doing a little bit of homework on the film itself.  I started the first ten minutes thinking that this was going to be a movie similar to Police Story, also by Jackie Chan.  (In this moment, I realized that Police Story and My Lucky Stars were both made in the same year.) Jackie Chan was doing these amazing, often unnecessary stunts.  Coupled with that was a budget that made the other movies in this box set feel incredibly cheap.  I was going to whine that a lot of the movies in this box set were all masters in the element of stalling for time because most of these movies lack a plot that can support an hour-and-a-half runtime.  Like, the movie is mostly bits.  Bit after bit that all seem to forget that this is a movie about the Japanese underground kidnapping a cop.  That's the plot of the movie.  Instead, much of the movie is Kidstuff and his gang getting into shananigans (or trying to molest the one girl assigned to watching these dopes.)

Then I read up on the movie.  I'm not saying a deep read of the film.  I was just floored how little Jackie Chan was in the movie.  After all, I learned that there was another movie in this box set that Jackie Chan didn't want to be in and I thought that we might be dealing with a similar situation.  Nope, that wasn't the case.  The real case is that the Lucky Stars are a de facto comedy troupe (their first movie was called 5 Lucky Stars and My Lucky Stars is a tonal, but not canonical sequel to that film).  So I had to pivot as I was watching the movie.  This would be getting mad at Duck Soup for having too many bits.  The point of the movie is to have bits.   These guys are the Marx Brothers of Hong Kong and making movies in the mid-'80s.  Who am I to crap on that?

So, if this is a comedy about hijinks, what do I think of the movie?  I don't know.  I can't help but be part of a culture where these guys aren't in my home and that I don't necessarily have love for them.  One of the criticisms of the Lucky Stars is that they love to beat a dead horse.  Don't get me wrong, some of the conceits are hilarious.  One of the grosser bits (although I found kind of funny because I acknowledge that I'm obsessed with white knighting) is that the Lucky Stars try to trick Poison Ivy into thinking that robbers are tying them up.  The joke is that these guys are roped up with a pretty girl in the hopes that they can steal a kiss.  Now, the real gag comes from the fact that they all agreed to take turns with Poison Ivy, leading to a Family Guy level of repetition that is both funny and frustrating.  That's the humor.  Family Guy has kind of nailed the joke-that-has-gone-on-too-long to a science.  Like, they make you laugh.  Then they make you mad.  Then you are just impressed how long the bit has gone on.  I don't know if these bits ever got me back on board.  Like, there are moments where I'm intellectually laughing, but never actually laughing. Is it a culture thing or is it just not that funny?  I don't know.

My Lucky Stars often falls into the "incredibly forgettable" genre.  Honestly, if this wasn't part of a Criterion boxset, I would relegate this film to a double-feature with Beverly Hills Ninja.  There were a lot of movies like this.  Maybe stuff like Johnny English frames the film as a loosey-goosey action movie, but the point is to be as silly as possible.  In these films, we have the thinnest characterizations.  (Golly, I hate that I'm going intellectual snob on this film when really I should just accept that some movies are dumb and that we shouldn't be investing this much blogging space to exploring the film).  One of the thing about Poison Ivy is that she makes her opinions clear on the Lucky Stars.  They are gross and she is constantly offended by their nonsense.  But there's a moment where the film needs to progress beyond this pretty girl hanging out with these gross turds. So, all of the sudden, she falls for Kidstuff?  Kidstuff?  I know that he's the director of the movie, but I don't quite get the whole logic.  It's like the film is so married to formula that we needed to change character motivation.  I don't hate this decision, by the way.  It leads to my favorite bit, where Kidstuff revvs the enging on a moped and knocks Poison Ivy off.  I enjoyed that.  

But if we're watching this as a sorta-Jackie Chan vehicle, can I tell you that the action sequences are flipping great?  Maybe it's the money that's being thrown at this movie.  But the only reason that My Lucky Stars should be part of the box set is because, what limited fight sequences are in the film are really, really impressive.  It kept feeling like there was more to Muscles than the movie really let us in on, but that's because I was desperate for challenging content.  Instead, I had to admire just how dangerous this movie looked to make, especially considering the speed at which Chan is moving in these fight sequences.  And, also, like Sammo Kam-Bo Hung can move?  Like, he's so good that the other stars in the previous movies in this box are moving kind of slow.  

Honestly, I feel like My Lucky Stars probably has more in common with the Western films that Chan would go onto make than what I've seen in the previous kung fu entries.  It is not a great movie.  It is fun, but it often misses more than it hits.  Yeah, I like some of the running gags, but the movie wasn't all that great.