Love on Delivery

Based upon Takashi Hamori’s King of Destruction manga, Love on Delivery follows the plight of He Jin-Yin (Stephen Chow Sing Chi) - a down on his luck delivery boy who finds himself attracted to Lily (Christy Chung), a student of martial artist Black Bear (Joe Cheng), who is constantly hounding the young woman. But Yin is a cowardly chap, which reflects poorly on his employers and others around him. Furthermore he fails each and every time to keep Black Bear away from her. In order to impress Lily and attain some self respect he decides to take up martial arts training, when he spots a sign exclaiming “Coward’s Saviour” hanging above a rubbish grocery store. The owner of the store is “Devilish Muscle Man” (Ng Man-tat), a con-man who thinks he can squeeze as much out of Yin as possible, offering to help him by teaching him the ways of Ancient Chinese Boxing. To become a successful fighter he teaches Yin that he must wear a mask and harness deadly skills (which he actually makes up on the spot), but when he realises that he can’t get rid of Yin after learning that he has no money left his troubles go from bad to worse. Eventually he squares off with Black Bear, but soon Lily is visited by an old friend named Duan Shui Liu (Ben Lam), who is also the chief of the Karate club and seeks to take over the Elite Centre and marry Lily. Yin decides that enough is enough; he challenges Liu to a televised duel, and so begins a rigorously training regime which will prepare him for the biggest fight of his life.


Stephen Chow and director Li Lik-Chi were no strangers by the time that Love on Delivery hit Chinese theatres to huge success in 1994, having worked previously together on Legend of the Dragon in 1990, Magnificent Scoundrels in 1991 and Flirting Scholar two years later. They solidified their relationship throughout the rest of the nineties when Chow began writing his own scripts and began co-directing with Li; as such From Beijing with Love, God of Cookery and King of Comedy are widely regarded as some of Chow’s finest films. Love on Delivery came just after he’d completed work on part two of the magnificent A Chinese Odyssey tale and would prove to influence his later films, including Shaolin Soccer and most recently Kung Fu Hustle, by sharing a common theme in which the downtrodden protagonist would rise up against his tormentors and become a true hero.

Love on Delivery works best when it’s naturally showcasing Stephen Chow’s talents, as well as his gifted group of supporters who we all know too well by now. Being as much an ensemble piece it’s filled with impeccable timing from everyone, which gives off rapid quick-fire exchanges, barely giving us time to take in one joke before it delivers the next. Chow and the rest of his cast portray familiar archetypes, each one having since been employed in subsequent movies, with Ng Man-tat leading the support as a local con-man who once was well respected, but now lives a life of squalor - think Shaolin Soccer and you’ll almost have the exact same character. Love on Delivery is also a very accessible piece, perhaps more so than any of the other collaborations between Chow and Li, being largely geared toward a martial arts movie fan base, with references and parodies going to any number of Kung Fu features, particularly in relation to several overtly silly training montages which instantly start ringing those brain bells. And it’s a great of fun, with Chow in his element, knowing that his visual cues are spot on piss-takes/homage’s of the familiar clichés. Naturally the humour becomes quite broad as the film carries on and we find a lot of contemporary references littered throughout, namely in association with television and music entertainment; Garfield, Kamen Rider, Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai - all providing some form of bizarre and often convenient set up, not to mention a very funny Terminator 2 nod and the obligatory cartoon violence which is always so becoming of Chow and his wonderful facial expressions.


To get a little critical though the bulk of Love on Delivery’s storyline highlights just what’s wrong with many of Chow’s films, in which he attempts to win the girl and save the day. In the twelve years since its debut he still hasn’t quite grasped the importance of building relationships; often sidelining these elements in favour of showing off his own skills or his comradery with his familiar supporting cast. It’s not often that his female companions are given prominent roles whereby we can sympathise with them, save for the likes of Fight Back to School, Forbidden City Cop, A Chinese Odyssey and From Beijing with Love being amongst the best in highlighting Chow at top of his game. The problem, then, with Love on Delivery - although we can’t blame him for the script - is that the film’s central objective, the main drive behind his character being his love for Lily, is a little less than compelling. There’s never a moment where we actually care about whether or not these two will get together, and a lot of that is partially down to Christy Chung’s rudimentary performance, which does very little to offer any kind of real chemistry between she and Chow. Her character’s ideals are typical and she naturally spends too long overlooking the poor fellow because he’s not the kind of hero she always envisioned herself wanting. While Chow tries his utmost to impress, Chung’s character isn’t anywhere near as likeable, being severely underwritten, and this proves to be a small deterrent in an otherwise fun and zany comedy.

It probably doesn’t help though that Li Lik-Chi ends up formulating the entire third act around the ultimate “Happy Boxing Championship”, which is only ever about presenting as many ludicrous moves - albeit however impressively staged - from Chow as possible. It’s all very enjoyable and energetic, however, but it certainly lessens the narrative, which by this point seems to have up and left. Still, despite these reservations Love on Delivery does as good a job as any other recent Chow movie, by issuing the message he so often cites with metaphorical aids - that people shouldn’t have to hide behind false pretenses, that there is a hero in everyone, which nobody else can see unless you open yourself up to them. In that respect Love on Delivery is a pleasant enough experience. It misses some of its marks, but it makes up for this with its simpler and sincere side, and if it can do that by making people laugh along the way then Chow has done his job well enough.


The DVD

It took a little while coming, but there wasn’t much doubt over a remastered disc turning up, in light of Chow’s catalogue seeing recent re-releases on DVD. Brought to us by Celestial Pictures.

A/V

With Celestial behind the release, due to owning the entire Shaw Bros catalogue, Love on Delivery looks about as good as we’ll ever see it. While it’s generally free from distracting marks and looks relatively clean it has a distinctly high brightness levels, which I suspect may be intentional; the film uses a fair amount of diffusion filtering, so it has that “hazy” look, while normal looking scenes still exhibit a lack of depth in black areas. Other tones come across quite pleasingly though, such as skin and backgrounds. There’s a little softness, which appears inherent to the original source, a spot of edge enhancement and some minor aliasing, along with the transfer exhibiting ghosting. The film is presented anamorphically, in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1


For sound we have original Cantonese mono and also Mandarin mono. There’s very little to elaborate on here, suffice it to say that the film delivers as much as it can. There are no distortions or major distractions of any kind.

It’s nice to see that we appear to have a newly translated subtitle stream. Going by some of the older Mei Ah and Universe releases of Chow on DVD, which featured spectacularly ropey translations, this is quite a revelation indeed. There are very few grammatical errors here, which are quite insignificant anyway, and the plentiful gags make a lot of sense, with none of those “huh?” moments to be found. Lily appears as “Li” though.

Extras

The special features are fairly brief, as to be expected. Aside from the original trailer and an updated one, along with a few more for other Chow films from Celestial, we have a couple of small photo galleries, biographies for Stephen Chow, Christy Chung, Ng Man-tat and Li Lik-Chi. Also available for viewing is the original poster and production notes (a.k.a. tiny synopsis/one paragraph review).


Overall

Love on Delivery is another fine entry into the canon of Stephen Chow. While it lacks resonance in certain important areas it carries itself very well in terms of its plentiful jokes, fronted by a fine performance from its star.

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