My Wife is a Gambling Maestro

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Year of release: 2008

Genre: comedy/gambling

Director: Wong Jing

Action director: Adam Chan

Producer: Wong Jing

Writer: Two Fat Men

Cinematography: Ng King-Man

Music: Lincoln Lo

Editor: Li Kar-Wing

Stars: Nick Cheung, Natalie Meng, Cheung Tat-Ming, Danny Chan, Ben Cheung, Wong Jing, Samuel Pang, Winnie Leung, Xing Yu. Lee Lik-Chi, Yedda Chao

Rated IIB for violence and language

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My Wife is A Gambling Maestro  My Wife is A Gambling Maestro

My Wife is A Gambling Maestro  My Wife is A Gambling Maestro

Wong Jing gnaws on the entrails of his own filmography's corpse with the tepid My Wife is a Gambling Maestro, which manages to totally underwhelm the viewer at every turn, despite many of the elements being stolen wholesale from some of the director's better efforts in the genre such as God of Gamblers.

The story, which apparently embarrassed even the normally cinematically shameless Wong Jing to the point that he uses the pseudonym "Two Fat Men" for his screenwriting credit, has Nick Cheung playing nebbishy debt collector Jay Chou. Yes, many of the jokes in My Wife is a Gambling Maestro are based on characters having the same names as Chinese pop stars, and, sadly, that's about as good as it gets comedy-wise here.

Anyway, Jay comes across Ying Ying (Natalie Meng) on the beach, unconscious and with no memory. So, of course, he takes her home, eventually finding out that she's the "Goddess of Gamblers" who is scheduled to face off in a tournament to crown Asia's top gambler. Will Jay's hatred of gamblers stop him from finding true love? Will Ying Ying be able to overcome her crooked opponent and win the tournament? Does anyone actually give one shit, much less two, about what happens?

I would have to wager the answer to that rhetorical question would be "no" by most sane people. Perhaps if Wong had just went with the whole "Goddess of Gamblers" gimmick, we might have gotten an entertaining picture. Sure, it would most likely be something as shallow as a kiddie pool that pandered to the lowest common denominator, but at least it probably would have been fun, unlike the snoozer Wong has squeezed out here, which ranks right down there with dreck like Kung Fu Mahjong 3 (which Wong actually has the balls to use footage from) as far as poorly-made Hong Kong gambling films go.

RATING: 3