Article by Candace Lee
Photo credit Rebecca Xu
In this world of hi-jinks and often surreal comedic situations, the train of plot comes barreling down the tracks, making hurried stops at each location to deliver the next series of punchlines—sometimes literally, punch lines—to ensure the audience does not squirm in their seat, longingly eyeing the exit and clock by the time the film’s halfway mark rolls around. Unfortunately, that is what results all the same, in varying degrees depending on one’s tolerance for movies where the comedy is the main driving force for the plot.
In Love Undercover, the viewer follows the story of a hapless female cop fresh out of the academy, defined at best as blunt and clumsy, ruining the plans of her own design and those of the people around her but in a hilarious way, as the film assures us. The film definitely has its moments, easily eliciting laughs free of emotional investment with the characters. The danger the characters are in appear to be superficial, as if it were a placeholder and pretense of conflict that keeps the story barely moving on.
The romance brewing between the male and female lead, Hoi and Fong Lai Kuen, does come across as heartwarming, the plot coming down from its goofy, comedy-driven high for a few scenes to explain character motivation and injecting a sense that the characters have actual feelings and times of misery, though these scenes are cleverly flecked with bits of comedy that remind the audience that it is at its forefront a comedy film.
If you are in the market for laughs and fairytale romance that needs no rhyme or reason except utter devotion to one’s prince or princess, the characters of Love Undercover are marvelous in their straight-faced quips and play on words, in a way pristine in their roles as punching bags, taking a hilarious fall and bobbing back up in anticipation for the next sight gag.
Leave a Reply