11 best Hong Kong films on Netflix to stream this Lunar New Year: from Jackie Chan action movies to romance with Andy Lau and classic Chow Yun-fat comedies
Unfortunately, that is not an option in 2021. You can still count on Netflix, though, for there’s more to the streaming service than just viral hits like The Queen’s Gambit or Tiger King. Over the years, Netflix has added an array of local Hong Kong films, many of which make are perfect for a Lunar New Year family gathering.
Here are 11 of the best Hong Kong classics currently streaming on Netflix.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World
A traditional LNY classic, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World looks at the life of the Pui family. An assortment of everyday Hongkongers, the Puis get by but money is tight. The family patriarch, played by Bill Tung, works a respectable television job but his on-air gaffs earn him the wrath of his boss. Then there’s the trouble with the family’s three daughters, one deeply in love with her boyfriend, one who dreams of going to Japan, and the youngest who is an academic prodigy. All these fun storylines get turned inside out when the family wins the lottery and becomes rich overnight.
The Magnificent Scoundrels
This is one of Stephen Chow’s earliest hits and still one of his funniest. A great comedy, perfect for family gatherings, The Magnificent Scoundrels pairs Chow with Teresa Mo as a couple of con artists badly in debt. Separately, the pair come up with a scheme to pay off the loan sharks hounding them. However, Chow and Mo continually get in each other’s way, to much hilarity. The humour isn’t always sophisticated – there are plenty of jokes about people’s appearance and at least one gag involving vomit – but overall this is still one of Chow’s most consistently amusing films.
The Thirty Million Dollar Rush
An Autumn’s Tale
Wheels on Meals
Want a little more action in your Lunar New Year streaming? Opt for Wheels on Meals, one of the finest collaborations between “the three brothers” Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao, who together made some of the 80s’ finest action films like this, Project A and Dragons Forever. A rare international affair for a Hong Kong film, the setting is Barcelona, where Thomas (Chan) and his business partner David (Biao) run a mobile fast food operation. Hung is a private detective keeping tabs on Sylvia (Lola Forner), a beauty who, inevitably, involves the three men in all sorts of trouble.
Fat Choi Spirit
From Beijing with Love
For more laughs, try Stephen Chow’s comic take on James Bond movies. The story here is that a valuable dinosaur’s skull has been stolen from China and the only man who can solve the mystery is Ling Ling Chat (Zero Zero Seven). One of Chow’s finest screwball comedies, From Beijing with Love predates the likes of Austin Powers and is arguably funnier and more inventive. Some of Chow’s films can lose their impact for anyone not fluent in Cantonese slang or the Hong Kong popular culture of the time, but, given the well-known tropes associated with James Bond, there’s plenty in this effort to appeal to a wide audience.
The Diary of a Big Man
Chow Yun-fat is on fine form in this one, one of many popular comic roles he have rarely received attention in the West where he has always been considered an action star. The comic situation here is that he meets two women and falls in love with both of them. Unable to decide between the two, he does the natural thing and chooses to secretly marry them both and lead a double life. Of course, all sorts of comedy ensues as he tries to juggle two lives and two wives.
Tricky Brains
No film directed by Wong Jing can be considered highbrow – Jing being the man responsible for trashy flicks like Naked Killer, Kung Fu Mahjong and Raped By An Angel 4: The Raper’s Union – but the man does know how to make an entertaining piece of work. Tricky Brains is exactly that. The basic plot isn’t much – girl comes back from a trip abroad to work incognito at her father’s company and falls in love with one of his lowly workers – but there are plenty of good gags and Stephen Chow is on fine form as a professional trickster up to all sorts of mischief.
God of Gamblers
Fantasia
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- Gathering around the TV is an unofficial LNY holiday tradition, but forget The Queen’s Gambit or K-drama – Netflix also hosts a raft of Hong Kong classics
- From God of Gamblers to An Autumn’s Tale or a classic Stephen Chow comedy, these now-streaming picks are sure to get the family together