One of director Ronny Yu's early films, Mummy Dearest takes on the seemingly Herculean task of putting the squeaky-clean (and very bland) pop star Alan Tam in a role where he plays a demented serial killer. Oh, did I mention that this is a comedy? On paper, this all sounds like a terrible idea, especially given the woeful nature of the majority of Hong Kong comedies released during this period. But, actually, despite some mis-steps, Mummy Dearest does end up being a fairly fun movie to check out.

In the film, Alan plays Kam, a stock broker who is so devoted to his mother (Tang Pik-Wan) that he begins killing men he sees being mean to their own mothers. Despite being labeled as a "impotent person of low intelligent quotient" by the police, Kam manages to elude capture, so the cops call in old inspector Bill (Bill Tung), who hatches a plan to date Kam's mother to lure him out.

There are some dark turns taken during the story, and behind the neon-colored shirts, short shorts, and upbeat Cantopop, it almost comes off as a dig at the greed-fueled society of the 1980's. Perhaps it is because I'm viewing this movie in 2010, and Ronny Yu had no such aspirations when he was making the movie, but there was definitely some some of American Psycho-esque vibe to the proceedings in many parts.

Unfortunately, Mummy Dearest doesn't spend enough time exploring these dark cinematic alleyways, instead putting forth the overly-loud and dopey comedy many Hong Kong productions favored during this period. The ideas of slapstick and serial killing end up not -- at least in this case -- not gelling together very well, and the picture as a whole suffers as a result. Despite that, this is still one of the more unique Hong Kong movies that you're going to see and is worth checking out if you want to expand your HK movie viewing habits a bit.

RATING: 6