My Review of "All for the Winner"

All for the Winner is a Hong Kong comedy that came out in 1990. Even though I love the majority of Stephen Chow movies that I've seen, I can't say I'm a fan of this one. As expected the story kind of goes all over the place but even worse the wackiness goes to insane levels that I couldn't even get into.

The movie starts out with an opportunistic scumbag by the name of Tat. He's supposed to be waiting on his nephew Sing at the bus station but he never shows up. Instead he's gambling as usual. Sing has to fend for himself in this foreign city. As a country bumpkin he's way outside his element but is very trusting and naïve. This is your usual Stephen Chow plotline, so far so good.

Eventually Sing goes around town to find his uncle Tat and eventually finds him. They have a strained relationship. Tat can't stand the kid whereas Sing thinks the world of his uncle. This relationship is about to change dramatically when Tat discovers that Sing has special abilities.

It's discovered that Sing has telekinetic abilities of some sort. It's not very well explained but, Tat being Tat, he immediately sees uses of this power to cheat at gambling. Pretty soon he has Sing seeing through cards and changing cards for their favor. Unfortunately the powers do have a downside. They really zap the power out of Sing whenever he uses the powers. Sing has to use his powers intermittently so as not to drain himself physically and mentally.

Tat being the opportunist doesn't see this flaw and starts to over exploit his young nephew for profit. As soon as you know it they get themselves into trouble with the wrong people as a result. If you thought that first part was wacky then you don't know the half of it with this movie. This movie then goes into a whole slew of different types of adventures and comedy scenarios. Many of the likes being even too wacky for me. There was this one part where they get Sing to go out to dinner with their friend's armpit because they associated a birthmark on the armpit to be the love of his life. Yeah it goes that far.

Still there are still some pretty funny moments with this movie. Despite the zaniness and very problematic scenarios we have in the movie there are glimpses of fun. You really have to ignore a lot of things to enjoy this one though. The crazy pieces can often throw you outside of the movie and wonder what the hell you're watching. Yes there's a lot of that in Stephen Chow movies but this one is another level.

It's also a product of it's time. Much like a lot of the comedies that Stephen Chow did in the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of things are not socially acceptable anymore. In this case you'll watch this and wonder if some of this stuff was actually socially acceptable during their time. You kind of want to go back in time to see what the reactions of these bits were for the people of that time and cultural surrounding.

Overall, I did not have the best time with this movie. It had some fun moments but they were all lost in a lot of extreme slapstick that didn't really work for me. Unfortunately I don't think that it would work for many people from western cultured viewpoints either. That's why I have to give this movie a 4 out of 10. It pains me to not like this movie especially when it did have some fun potential.