Gui mi 2 [Girls 2: Girls vs Gangsters] (2018)

(On TV, October 2020) Ummm. Urrr… OK. Um, what? Chinese gender-flipped The Hangover (or should we just say Bridesmaids?) derivative Girls 2: Girls vs Gangsters features three young Asian women waking up in another country after a wild night, with a new tattoo, a mysterious suitcase, and no memory of what just happened. If the similarities aren’t big enough, consider the Mike Tyson shows up later for a brief role. Fine, so no conceptual originality here. What about the rest? Well, again, Ummm. Urrr… Under writer-director Wong Chun-Chun, the film struggles to either come together harmoniously, or have something like a female-centric point of view. Having Tyson show up, considering his checkered past with women, isn’t exactly a progressive mark of honour. Other crude jokes and sequences sometimes feel more akin to male fan service than a film by and for young women. Maybe that’s interrogating the film from an unsuitable angle, but even then—this young women’s comedy is often awkward, laborious and scattered. Now, I won’t exactly call it terrible—the three leads are cute and bubbly enough that the film does earn a few chuckles and sympathetic smiles. Absent too-pointed questions, Girls 2: Girls vs Gangsters is all quite silly—not particularly good, but likable enough to get a bare pass as pure entertainment.