Reviewed by: lordmanji Date: 02/05/2001 Summary: The Good, The Bad, and the Hairy Are You Lonesome Tonight is not a bad picture by any means, nor is it any good. Rather, AYLT is one more of the newly-emerging American-style cliched Hk movies, such as And I Hate You So and Needing You, dependent more on formulaic story-telling devices than breaking any new ground or at least conveying it's own sense of style. That brings me to the Hairy. An excellent example of cliches in this movie is the use and extensive reuse of a somewhat humorous scene at the beginning of the movie in which Jordan Chan's character Dai Bao refers to his soon-to-be sister in law as "hairy crab legs." This phrase is repeatedly brought back and increases the movie's cheese factor. Ostensibly, AYLT is a movie about a rich girl and a poor man's romance, and asks the question: can they find love despite their different backgrounds? A sub theme is how and if the poor and rich can get along, and how strong those bonds are as those very same bonds are tested when they find out HuiHui's fiance is offering a huge reward for information regarding her. A particularly forced happening in AYLT is how the characters all start hooking up. This could very much have been avoided as it makes the movie very cheesy towards the end. However the movie is not ruined from the conventional script due to the sheer amount of fun/energy that emits from the actors, most notably Jordan Chan in his role as fiscally poor Dai Bao. JC is at once lovably foolish and at the turn of a scene, pitifully meandering in his ways. His heart is broken at the end and he hardly says a word, but his hearts state is projected through his face. The supporting actors also play their parts well, and as the movie further spirals into the blackhole of clichedom as ALL the characters develop a romance, they play it satisfactorily as possible. Most importantly is that everyone in the film looks to be having so much fun, nor does the movie have one menacing or even remotely bad character. The fun and light-hearted nature of the movie, while compromising literature integrity which produces cheese, is still surprisingly sweet at some moments and overall enjoyable. Note: best part of the movie is break-up sequence with JC's fabulously sad song..perfectly summarizes the movie in a catchy way.