Super Model

(Wo yao zuo model, Vincent Kok, Hong Kong, 2004)

Hong Kong filmmakers are specialists in the rapid appropriation and combination of successful movie ideas, whether from Hollywood, locally, or indeed anywhere.

Super Model mashes up select elements from Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality (2000), and especially Ben Stiller’s modern classic, Zoolander (2001).

Here, a dowdy cop (Karena Lam) has to guard a famous, male supermodel (Ronald Cheng) – and, in order to protect him up-close even on the catwalk, she requires a glam makeover and model training.

The premise gets driven in various, wayward plot directions, such as a lengthy, village visit to the cop’s strait-laced parents – all set to a virtually non-stop accompaniment of gloriously plastic disco songs (and dances).

As in many US trash comedies of the Pauly Shore variety, Super Model both eagerly dives into queer humour, and disavows this interest in every possible way. But in HK comedy, no one takes these surface denials seriously …

© Adrian Martin August 2015