By Edwin Yeo

Banking on Po Po

LIANG Po Po probably would not have imagined it herself, but she has become a key player in the local film industry.

Raintree Pictures is banking on her making a successful transition from TV to the big screen in Liang Po Po - The Movie.

Raintree Pictures is banking on her making a successful transition from TV to the big screen in Liang Po Po - The Movie.

It's crucial that and the movie strikes a chord with audiences if Raintree is to become anything like Singapore's leading film studio.

There is a bigger issue beyond Raintree's concerns. With so many people caught in the grip of film-making fever, all eyes are on Liang Po Po to see if the huge success of Money No Enough was indeed a fluke.

Who can blame them?

Teenage Textbook the Movie, Number and Tiger's Whip have all failed to recoup their costs at the box office.

With no fewer than 10 local movies scheduled for release this year, the industry is in dire need of a shot in the arm to prove to investors that there's money to be made in local movies.

So, in a way, the future of Singapore film-making depends on you, viewers. But the bottomline, as always, is whether this movie is worth your $7.

And in a word, yes. It is.

NOW, TO THE REVIEW ... I've never been a great fan of Liang Po Po (Jack Neo).

I've seen her only a few times on Channel 8's Comedy Night and she still doesn't appeal to me, with that silly hunch and fake asthmatic talk. But the situations she gets into are a laugh-a-minute.

As on TV, Liang Po Po is naive and trusting. Leaving the old folks' home, she finds herself with no work or place to stay.

When she meets two gangsters, Ah Beng (Mark Lee) and Ah Seng (Henry Thia), she figures she can be part of their gang because she's good at selling pirated VCDS.

On top of that, she makes one heck of a debt collector. Not for her strongarm tactics. She just hounds the loan defaulters until they cave in.

A friendship quickly develops between the trio. Ah Beng, especially, grows to care for Liang Po Po.

But Singapore gangsters are behind the times compared with Hongkong triads. So the gang's Big Boss (John Cheng) hires two triad members from there as consultants.

Enter Hongkong stars Eric Tsang (pictured, with Liang Po Po) and Shereen Tang, who play Wai Kor and Mun Jie.

The comedy kicks into high gear as the "consultants" belittle everything about the local gang, from their appalling fashion sense of singlets and slippers to their type of "businesses".

Jack Neo's performance as Liang Po Po is flawless. You do forget that she, I mean he really isn't an 85-year-old lady.

But Mark Lee stands out the most. While Jack is funny, Mark puts a lot of emotion into his Ah Beng role. He's hilarious as a gangster with a heart.

The production values are really high, considering the $800,000 budget. There are two big fight scenes, including a shootout. Superb direction and technical quality put a $1 million movie like Tiger's Whip to shame.

The only disappointment is that the storyline builds up to a peak but then fizzles out at the end. It's almost as if they didn't know how to end the film.

Still, it's worth watching because Liang Po Po is more than just a local movie - it's a world-class production.