LAN KWAI FONG 3 (喜爱夜蒲3) (2013)

Genre: Drama/Romance
Director: Wilson Chin
Cast: Alex Lam, Ava Liu, Jena Ho, Sammy Sum, Mia Chan
Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes)
Released By: Golden Village Pictures 
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 2 January 2014

Synopsis: Shin and Sara have been engaged for two years. They once had an argument and agree to have fun individually. Sara's best friend Jena, who always has a soft spot for Shin, then tried every means to seduce him. Meanwhile, Jena's boyfriend Jacky is also getting close with another girl Jolie who's fun and wild. Lan Kwai Fong, the famous Hong Kong nightspot, is as bustling as usual during the weekends. The girls are all gathering up to rock the clubs. Then, Sara meets a hot Korean hunk name Kim. The relationship between all of them starts to change..

Movie Review:

If you need an introduction to the ‘Lan Kwai Fong’ movies, then look no further than the poster itself. It’s a flesh parade really, a chance to gawk and ogle at pretty twenty something girls whose main purpose - and indeed even sole activity - in life is to party, hook up and make out. It’s also an opportunity to live vicariously as a party animal, an invitation to feel what it is like to let loose and be immersed in the combination of pulsing music, strobe lights and the constant attention of members of the opposite sex.

Now if that doesn’t appeal to you, then we’re sure you’re not the reason why writer/ director Wilson Chin has - within the span of the last two years - managed to turn this into a trilogy. Indeed, the fact that we’re watching the third instalment of what we never would have thought at the start could become a franchise demonstrates that there is an audience out there who revels in the pleasures that Chin’s ‘Lan Kwai Fong’ movies bring - and let’s be very clear that it has nothing to do with a compelling plot or characters.

Essentially, ‘Lan Kwai Fong 3’ unfolds over the course of three nights at a club in the Hong Kong district, one at a club in Korea (the first time the movie has gone overseas for location shooting we may add) and one weekend beach party on board three expensive yachts. As for sets, just add some rooms and a Jacuzzi where the intimate lovemaking scenes unfold and your list will be complete. Within that setup, Chin tells the ups and downs of a bunch of pretty young females - and perhaps one not so attractive companion - who simply love and are addicted to the clubbing life.

If you need to know, the key characters are a quartet of best friends - there’s Sara (singer Ava Yu) who has been engaged to Shin (Alex Lam) for the past two years, Jeana (Jeana Ho) who’s harboured a secret crush on Shin, Jo (TVB’s Whitney Hui) who’s just returned from overseas, and last but not least Papa (Celia Kwok) who is the not so pretty one among them and often referred to unkindly as ‘pork chop’. Their run-ins include a Korean hunk with the hots for Sara, a geeky pathologist with the hots for Papa and oh not forgetting a wannabe model whom Jeana slighted just to bring out the claws.

There’s no point really discussing the rest of the story, because so little of it is present that we’d probably end up revealing the whole movie anyways - and which is probably why Chin managed so quickly to revise the script before production when ‘Vulgaria’ actress Dada Chan dropped out. But Chin knows exactly what his target audience is here for, and he offers it in spades. Not only are there plenty of gratuitous shots of bosoms and bottoms, you’ll also be treated to about five softcore porn-type making-out scenes that (yeah) turn up the temperature - and we mean that as a pun especially for one of them filmed in an outdoor spa in winter in Korea.

If you must know, it ends - like each of its predecessors - with a corny declaration of love by one of the couples, though we can reassure you that it isn’t as cringe-worthy as the ‘running backwards’ sequence in ‘Lan Kwai Fong 2’ to symbolise the turning back of time. But hey, even though it is a horrible movie by any conventional standard, let’s just say it does deliver the trashy pleasures. Like we said at the beginning, this is a movie that knows exactly who it is preaching to, knows exactly what its message should be, and offers nothing more or less. At the very least, it stands head and shoulders above the first and second chapter by having a sense of humour (the scene where the pathologist pastes a gauze over a small wound on Papa’s ass and then proceeds to make out with her in her lingerie is simply hilarious), so if you’re checking out ‘Lan Kwai Fong 3’, know exactly what you should be in for and you’ll be gratified. 

Movie Rating:

(It’s a flesh parade all right - but for not promising anything more and delivering nothing less, it is entertaining in its own trashy, shallow way)

Review by Gabriel Chong