Love is Elsewhere (Oi ching maan sui -2008)

Starring:
Pak-ho Chau - Joe
Cheuk-lap Hung - Sing
Pak-yu Chan - Sung
Sherman Chung - Ching
Hei-Yi Cheng - Sandra
Chelsea Tong - Kelly
Charmaine Fong - Maggie
Yun Hui - Sing's uncle
Yan Ng
Patrick Tang Fung Chi-Ho

This whole story revolves around this shop named "love love soho" internet cafe ran by Ar Ching (Sherman Chung) and Ar Sang (Jason Chan). This shop gives out non-professional psychological help to friends about love. Ar Ching and Ar Sang decided to go to Beijing to study when they earned their first hundred thousand... but Ar Ching's old flame Martin (Louis Cheung)'s appearance made their relationships worse...

A young doctor, Joe (PakHo Chau), used to have Maggie (Charmaine Fong) as his girlfriend. But then he got bored of the relationship and broke up with her. She was very upset that she schemed a revenge. She introduced Joe to her pretty cousin Kelly (Chelsea Tong), who is back from Canada for holidays. Kelly is supposed to date Joe and then dumps him, so he will understand how Maggie feels. Kelly managed to attract Joe and the two begins dating. Slowly Kelly finds herself actually falling in love with him. She wanted to get out of Maggie's plan but it was too late. Maggie also framed Joe by selling a photo of him passing medicine to her friend on a gossip magazine, with a headline "Young doctor sold drugs in a soho club". Kelly felt very guilty and left...

Ar Yue (Yumiko Cheng), is a young painter. She promised she would say yes after her boyfriend Ar Ho (Patrick Tang), a broker, has proposed to her 100 times. Ar Yue always noticed Ar Sing (Ken Hung), a delivery boy for a nearby restaurant, peeking at her when she was painting in her shop. Ar Sing kept sending hot soups over for her and finally took her to see him sing at a local club. Mr. Johnson, Ar Yue's favorite artist, wanted to rape her and Ar Sing saved her. Then Ar Sing brought her back to her house and cleaned her house for her. Ar Yue invited him to lunch to thank him. Ar Ho, busy with the finance market work, often misses his appointments with Ar Yue. Finally, when he asked her to marry him the 100th time, she said no and broke up with him. After Ar Yue and Ar Sing met, they spent a night together. Next morning Ar Yue was not sure she wanted to be with Ar Sing and told him to leave her. But later, she changed her mind and went to see Ar Sing at his club. But Ar Sing was too upset to perform.

This was a cute movie. I wouldn't say it was slow, I just felt that they had too many hands in the cookie jar. They had three separate couples with different love stories. The first couple, owners of SoHo cafe, I thought had some redeeming qualities but the story fell fast because we see the ex-boyfriend once and then we the audience have to figure out that story. Okay, jealousy, and then it got confusing because I couldn't figure out why Ching was always mad.

Joe and Kelly were interesting but again there wasn't enough time to promote their relationship. Okay, she was working for her cousin to get Joe back but she eventually fell for Joe but how could she really when she spent most of the time avoiding him. ????????

Then we have Sing and Yu. Hmm? I couldn't understand how she could dump her boyfriend of God knows how many months/years because he was doing his job. How was he supposed to know she fell and sprained her ankle? How was he to know she would get psycho blitzed and almost get raped by an overly horny Engishman? Okay, Sing was always there to the rescue but he was a peeping Tom with nothing else to do. Yes, he was cute but I felt if they wanted to portray this relationship..there should have been more story.

This could have been an awesome movie but it was enough to say "Ahhh." I just wasn't given enough time to fall in love with the characters or it could have been a tissue fest.

But there was some definite eye-candy...fo' sho'.

Jason Chan

Did you know he was a former Power Ranger? The series Power Ranger: Ninja Storm....the green ranger. There ya go...you just learned something. LOL!