I WANT TO BE BOSS (AI拼才会赢) (2025)

Genre: Comedy/Drama
Director: Jack Neo
Cast: Jack Neo, Henry Thia, Aileen Tan, Patricia Mok, Zhang Shui Fa, Dawn Yeoh, Ke Le, Terence Cao, Jae Liew, Joshua Tan, Maxi Lim, Collin Chee, Shawn Thia
Runtime: 2 hr 3 mins
Rating: PG13 (Some Sexual References)
Released By: mm2 Entertainment and Golden Village Pictures
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 24 January 2025

Synopsis: Dongnan (Henry Thia), long been known for his laziness and unreliability is demoted to a security guard by his boss. Struggling with poor career prospects, he dreams of becoming his own boss. With the help of Food Critic Influencer Queen (Dawn Yeoh) and Qiang (Jack Neo), he opens a restaurant and experiences success with his excellent culinary skills. Seeking to improve his home life and relationship with his wife Nan sao (Aileen Tan), he purchases an AI robot, Ling Ling (Patricia Mok) to help with household chores. However, things take a wrong turn when his apprentice Steven (Zhang Shui Fa) betrays him and opens his own restaurant offering similar cuisines, while his wife gets jealous and suspicious of him being unfaithful as he is surrounded by young and beautiful co- workers every day. With the support and help from his family and AI robot, can Dongnan overcome the new challenges that await?

Movie Review:

We’ll start with the only compliment we have about Jack Neo’s latest movie – it isn’t a sequel to or spinoff from his signature ‘I Not Stupid’, or ‘Money No Enough’, or ‘Ah Boys to Men’ franchises.

Indeed, that is about the only good thing about this utter misfire that shows sparks of a satirical take on Singapore’s National AI Strategy (like how ‘I Not Stupid’ was for our education system) but completely implodes what potential it might have had.

We chuckled at the opening that had Singaporean radio deejay cum PM Lawrence Wong-lookalike Kenneth Chung talk about our country’s AI strategy and how that would transform our lives, jobs and economy; and then we sat shell-shocked at how unfunny, incoherent and hysterical the rest of the movie was.

Co-written by Neo and Link Sng, ‘I Want to be Boss’ sees Henry Thia play Nan, a 58-year-old employee of a catering firm that is given a choice by the company’s second-generation boss (Joshua Tan) to either accept a demotion to a security guard or early retirement. He chooses the latter, and after some to-ing and fro-ing with his ‘kopitiam’ buddies about how his wife Nan-sao (Aileen Tan) would ‘rob’ his retirement payout, he decides to put the tidy sum of $150,000 in a new single CIMB bank account (read: product placement).

When his neighbourhood ‘cai png’ stall loses one of his employees, Nam gets an opportunity to demonstrate his culinary skills at the stall, and thanks to its owner cum influencer-wannabe Queen (Dawn Yeoh), Nam gets a real shot at being the CEO of a restaurant. Nam also agrees to take on former colleague Steven (Zhang Shuifa) as his apprentice, although a combination of his own hubris and the latter’s arrogance will lead to a falling out that has regrettable consequences.

Where is the AI in all of this, you ask? That is the question in our minds throughout the first act of the movie, which spends an awfully long time setting up how Nam and his family, including his children (Ke Le and Shawn Thia) end up turning to AI Robot salesman Robert (Terence Cao) to get an AI assistant in the form of Ling Ling (Patricia Mok). Despite their initial skepticism, Ling Ling turns out to be not just domestic help but also domestic advisor, dishing out words of wisdom to Nam about not letting his anger get the better of help in a war of words against Queen and Steven and thereafter to Nan-sao to not get scammed by a young pretty boy who claims he can help her grow her investments.

If that sounds as if the whole AI premise is an afterthought, you’re absolutely right. Neo treats it as a lamentable gimmick – instead of ChatGPT, we get a robot who offers Nam a hug when he is upset and then suddenly loses power in the middle of it, so much so that Nan-sao comes home to catch them in a compromising position on the bed; and we haven’t even gotten started on the utterly deplorable jokes about how Ling Ling demands that Nan charge (插) her.

The other AI-enabled assistant in the movie is no better – nicknamed LMYT (or 烂命一条, which translates to ‘Worthless Life’), the Jae Liew-headed robot (we mean this literally) first aids Steven in scamming Nan-sao and creating deepfake videos to sow discord, before turning on her owner because he had asked Robert to install pirated software within without ‘human protection protocol’. That Neo would even consider this worthy of a two-hour movie is jaw-dropping to say the least. Ditto the AI-robot that the Police’s Anti-Scam Centre deploys, which is played by Maxi Lim in a body-hugging shimmering silver police uniform.

There is no doubt we’d get a happily-ever-after ending (and on that note, thank goodness it doesn’t come about through some contrived car accident that renders one of the main characters in hospital and a whole lot of weeping), but there is no wit, wisdom or intelligence in any bit of Neo’s writing or directing. Equally shocking is how he has managed to assemble a who’s who of Singaporean actors and actresses in this dreadful effort, wasting the talents of such veterans as Thia, Tan, Cao and Shuifa (and no, we’re not counting Neo in, because he’s responsible for this mess).

Let us be clear – we are not a Jack Neo hater for the sake of it (in fact, we’d proudly say that we thoroughly enjoyed ‘The King of Musang King’), but ‘I Want to be Boss’ is so terrible on so many levels that the entire movie deserves to be on the cutting room floor. Even more inexcusable is how it is such a dumb portrayal of AI that it would cause outsiders to think how we could ever proclaim ourselves a Smart Nation! And if this is the state of Singaporean cinema today, we’d say it’s time to retire the industry and reskill the entire sector. Oh yes, ‘I Want to be Boss’ is that abysmal, so please do yourselves a favour and stay far, far away – you won’t want to ruin your Lunar New Year this way.

Movie Rating:

(Probably the worst Jack Neo movie ever - if this is what the state of Singapore cinema is, then it deserves to be taken over by AI indeed)

Review by Gabriel Chong