Blooms Of Happiness Review: Ah Niu & Hong Huifang’s Back To The Future-Style Time-Travel CNY Comedy Is A Glorified TV Movie

Blooms of Happiness (PG13)

Starring Ah Niu, Hong Hui Fang, Vivienne Oon, Dennis Chew

Directed by Ryon Lee & Jy Teng

An agitated man, Tian (Malaysian singer-actor Ah Niu), goes back in time multiple times to prevent his mum, Mother Doo (Ajoomma's Hong Huifang), from being hit by a car.

He's aided by a mysterious figure named Cat God who pops up as various people. But each time, it’s botched up when he meets himself in the past, upsets the timeline and the whole thing needs to be reset again.

This Malaysian time-travel comedy — mostly nutty, partly poignant — is the jiuhu equivalent of our TV-ish shows put on the big screen. You know, those small-scale, low-cost pics where in the goofy NG — “no good” in TV parlance — outtakes, the cast seems to be having more fun than the viewers.

The difference is that while we go on about urban HDB, CPF or AI in our pics, up north is more about smaller-matter OKB ..... old kampong blues.

Shortie-loser Tian, a convenience-store owner, has an unshakeable complex since village days. Being stifled by his indefatigably devoted mother who, despite his childhood meanness towards her, dotes on him even in current grown-up times to make him grow successful and well, taller.

Hong is in her Channel 8 element as a benign grandma with wild white hair. With a running joke here about her son's aversion to her height-inducing bamboo shoot buns which becomes quite sentimental eventually.

If this was a China flick, it’d be as moving as Hi, Mom. But we aren't moved about much until the stronger and more touching final part of the film.

Tian’s agony is made worse by his out-of-his-league wife, Fen (Vivienne Oon from the Netflix series, The Ghost Bride), a pretty livestream-seller making more money who hangs around for their CNY family reunion dinner at Genting Highlands. She’s due to divorce him right after chap goh mei (CNY's last day).

Blooms Of Happiness — wouldn't Brooms Of Happiness be funnier? — isn't bad bad. But it’s Back To The Future done on a shoestring with strained strings stretched to over-dumped time-replay gag after gag that just kills our time. Like an absurd Stephen Chow-style CNY farcical fantasy without Stephen Chow’s absurdity.

“Didn’t you watch Back To The Future before?” Tian is asked at the start. Yep. We sure did. And this isn’t it.

The sad sack, hounded by debtors, jealous of his spouse and plagued by insecurity, gets to reboot the timeline due to a wish to a fortune cat figurine for celestial help. “Any god would do,” he pleads.

The good thing in this tale co-written by Malaysian co-director Ryon Lee (Small Town Heroes) is that Tian's time-travel companion, Cat God, is played by various characters. The bad is that some characters hit while others tank as the novelty runs out of steam.

The beginning when Cat God comes in the form of a homeless man, a Chinese-speaking Indian dude — “Don't assume that people with dark skin are bad” goes this movie's racial-harmony contribution — and a pathetic scammer-beau who cheats Fen of her money is quite okay.

The back-and-forth, hide-here-hide-there farce of stopping past-Tian from seeing present-Tian to preserve temporal rules is actually comical as the conspirators grow to include missus Fen and their precocious kid, Chong Ge (Aiden Wu). Director Lee’s most enjoyable segment is set right around the family’s reunion dinner table with phony bedroom seduction scenes thrown in.

But this deal falls apart when Cat God turns into kitschy eccentric folks — a hefty cross-dresser and Singapore’s Dennis Chew as costumed child diety, Nezha — unloading silly, hammy, seriously cringey antics. At which point, you’d wish for actual brooms of happiness to sweep merrily away.

By the way, Nezha Dennis is miles different from the cloth-twirling, flaming-wheels Nezha in Creation Of The Gods II: Demon Force, currently in our cinemas too.

Now, there’s Ah Niu meeting Ajoomma's Hong here. We know what these two can do in a love-my-mum pic.

The son’s sad pessimistic face and the mother’s chirpy optimistic demeanour are good complements that require more meaningful screen time away from the maddening madding crowd.

Director Lee should consider going back in time himself to reset this situation right. (2/5 stars)

Photos: mm2 Entertainment