Aces Go Places (1982)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Touches You

Absolutely Brilliant!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The first in a series of high-profile, hugely-popular Chinese comedies, this broad spoof mixes general Hong Kong weirdness, plenty of slapstick comedy, and a few decent fight scenes into a largely derivative and nonsensical plot. Crucially, this is a film which hinges on the humour – you either find it hugely funny or totally awful. Sadly, I fell into the latter camp, and for me the jokes fell flat every time. The film became largely pointless as soon as I realised this and what followed as an hour and a half's worth of boredom. Camp star Karl Maka, imitating Telly Savalas' Kojak, plays Babyjack, an investigating detective, and he teams up with a short-haired, kick-ass female cop – the character already a cliché even by this early point. There are minor appearances from the likes of Dean Shek and Tsui Hark, and Sam Hui, a low-rent Jackie Chan lookalike, provides some charisma in a heroic role.Various scenes in the movie include: the hero firing a grapple and sliding down a wire before jumping through a window; a series of booby-trapped toy cars that blow up genuine vehicles (an idea ripped off in Grand Theft Auto), a series of bizarre car chases that are played for laughs, and more boring chases than you can shake a stick at. Four sequels followed, with varying degrees of success, but I have to admit that I'm not too excited about watching them after sitting through this debacle. For Chinese comedy, I much prefer the hijinks of the LUCKY STARS films...

"Zuijia paidang" might be translated as "The best pairings", and if so, the first four films (this being the very first) can be interpreted, besides all the stealing, kicking, shooting and car-crashing going on, as an extended saga of three main persons in the following pairings:Nancy + CodySam + X (a different X adored but never consummated, in each of the 4)The rough but always again deep relationship of Nancy and Cody can be sketched as follows over the four films: #1: Getting to know, instinctive dislike, getting closer, sharing one pyjama #2: Wedding #3: Baby Junior is born (and joins his parents in weirdest adventures) #4: Junior is a pre-schooler now, his parents are separated, but in the end...Seen like this, it appears like a soap opera. It's of course a lot more, but I liked this continuing storyline quite much, as I watched all four films on one weekend. Altogether about 6 hours that I didn't regret. :^)One extended scene that I really enjoyed was the ballet gone wrong, and yet receiving so much applause by the audience.

Famous Jewel Thief King Kong (Sam Hui) steals $30,000,000.00 in diamonds from the mob, who have mistaken him for another famous jewel thief "White Gloves". Now White Gloves must go to Hong Kong to find the diamonds and clear his name or the mob will kill him. Hearing that White Gloves is in town the Hong Kong Police hire a chinese american detective Albert "Baldy" Au (Karl Maka) (A spoof on Kojak) to find and capture White Gloves. Police Supervisor Nancy Ho(Sylvia Chang) is partnered with Baldy to catch White Gloves. Soon the two learn that King Kong is the one responsible for the heist and in exchange for the police dropping charges against him, he agrees to turn over the diamonds and help Baldy arrest White Gloves for crimes commited in the USA. This is a James Bond-ish style film with a lot of action and a lot of slapstick. The "Aces Go Places" music video is well placed in the middle of the film sung by Sam Hui himself. The movie spawned 5 sequels Aces Go Places 2, AGP 3: Our Man From Bond Street, ACE 4, ACE 5: The Terncotta Hit, and Aces Go Places 97, although ACE 97 is a sequel in name only, sort of what Halloween 3 is to that series.One of the best comedies in history **********

Aces Go Places is—not that the credits will ever tell you—a remake of the Dick Emery film Get Charlie Tully. The storyline is identical, but the characters are distinctly Chinese.King Kong (Sam Hui) is a Simon Templar-like thief, known for pulling off a major jewel heist in Hong Kong. The Royal Hong Kong Police are stumped and decide to enlist overseas help from a shortlist which includes Inspector Clouseau—but realizing that actor Peter Sellers is now dead (an interesting use of in-jokes mixing reality with the film world), they turn to their next choice, American-based Albert Au (Karl Maka), the 'Bald Detective' (the literal translation of the series Kojak in Cantonese). Sylvia Chang plays a police superintendent who Au falls for.Apart from some changes to the story, and action sequences which arguably inspired Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and other film stars, it is Get Charlie Tully from there. Without revealing too much, the clues are identical; even certain gags.It doesn't mean to say this is a poor version of Get Charlie Tully. It has been cleverly changed to Chinese tastes, and the movie is still funny 18 years on. Arguably, the Hong Kong writers have created something even funnier than the Emery movie through a careful use of puns and metaphors. The pace and timing remain an odd, if hilarious, mixture of British and Chinese.It was, after all, successful enough for four more sequels through the 1980s, although after this outing, the Emery connection ended and Maka and company went for more - for want of a better term - originality.