Reviewed by: ewaffle Date: 11/25/2012 Summary: A by the numbers Wong Jing effort The real star of “On His Majesty’s Secret Service” is Wong Jing who does not let the viewer forget it for a moment: often the action is punctuated by the characters vomiting; crotches are kicked regularly; actors turn to the camera to comment on how the movie was shot; no toilets explode but one is invented; Sandra Ng has duck lips—twice. The only thing wrong with Louis Koo’s performance is that he doesn’t do comedy very well—particularly the slapstick pants falling down humor that is Wong’s specialty. While he seemed comfortable enough as the crazy inventor he is better in comedy as a straight man. Fan Siu-Wong looked to be having a great time as Lord Unicorn, the court eunuch. Decked out with white eyebrows and with effeminate mannerisms that go from slight to extreme as the movie progresses, he is a long way from “The Story of Ricky”. Sandra Ng’s role was one star turn after another; Barbie Hsu simpered, Liu Yang smoldered while Kingdom Yuen and Leung Kar-Yan played everything for laughs. There were plenty of movie business references. Royal Dog was called handsome, which Louis Koo is, several times; Leung Kar-Yan said that someone’s kung fu was as good as Ip Man, then broke the fourth wall and asked “Who the hell is Ip Man?”. The Transformers type suit of bronze armor that had whirling blades at the end of its arms and allowed the wearer to fly—or at least take flight although the getting down part hadn’t been worked out before the emperor gave it a test run—was the special effects centerpiece and was every bit as believable as were the robotic fighters in “18 Bronzemen”. The plot is feeble even by Wong Jing nonsense comedy standards: ninjas try to kill the emperor, his palace guard stops them and someone on the inside is giving information to the ninjas. One of the killers is a gorgeous woman disguised as a man who is so convincing and good looking that all of the women fall in love with her. There isn’t much here to recommend Reviewer Score: 4

Reviewed by: mrblue Date: 10/24/2009 Louis Koo does his best Stephen Chow imitation in On His Majesty's Secret Service, a new comedy helmed by Wong Jing. Taking more than a bit of inspiration from Forbidden City Cop -- which, not coincidentally, was also produced by Wong -- Koo plays a royal guard that uses his wits, rather than his fists, to get out of sticky situations. Like most of Wong's other releases, this goes all over the map, but it somehow ends up still being a fairly solid movie. Reviewer Score: 6

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