Mr. Boo Meets Pom Pom 智勇三宝

An indefatigable pair of cops (John Sham and Richard Ng) investigate a baffling case — how could the sturdiest glass, the kind installed in a jewelry store window, shatter during a robbery? The search for answers leads them to Mr. Boo (Michael Hui), a specialist in everything to do with break-ins, and with his help the case is successfully solved. Now it's time to return the favor — Mr. Boo is suffering terribly because his wife (Terry Hu) is seeing a thoroughly unpleasant millionaire (Stuart Ong) behind his back...

Impressions: Was the Pom Pom series really so "dead" an idea that by the third installment it had to be "crossbred" with another? And that's even considering that barely more than a year passed between the shooting of the first and third films! Be that as it may, the producers decided to add Mr. Boo to our familiar heroes — the popular character from the film series of the same name, a role that brought Michael Hui wide fame. But in cinema, alas, the laws of mathematics don't always hold, and multiplying by two didn't make a pretty good series twice as good.

Sad to say, this is one of the worst films for both series — it's funny enough and brisk, but contains not even a hint of intrigue (Stuart Ong's character is "bad" not because he's mixed up in crime, but only because he stole another man's wife and is a thoroughly unpleasant fellow besides) and is surprisingly bland — no matter what antics the main characters pull on screen, you find yourself desperately fighting sleep. The film drags, drags, drags like taffy — the screenwriters visibly strain to pull jokes out of thin air and stretch a minimalist plot to feature length, and scripts never forgive that kind of self-abuse.

By and large, the recipe here is the same as in the previous pictures, and at first the addition of Michael Hui to the cast seems an unqualified plus — he's a talented comedian who can make you laugh like no one else. Yet here Hui looks as if he was brought to the set at gunpoint — he comes alive in only a couple of scenes (one of them — where he visits his new friends — is superb), while the rest of the time he's frankly bored, delivering his unremarkable lines with a completely vacant expression. Richard Ng and John Shum, to be honest, are not much better, and the supporting players don't save the situation either.

For fans of the "crossed" series, the film is probably worth a look, but I really wouldn't recommend hoping for anything special. As is the tradition of the Pom Pom series, there's almost no action here, not too many good jokes, the plot is a nightmare, and the actors are giving half effort — prepare yourself for an hour and a half of fighting off sleep.