Forbidden City Cop

Ling serves in the palace guard and is the most incompetent of the unit; he cannot fight, cannot ride, and spoils something on every duty. He considers himself an inventor: he is always making devices and none of them work. His wife supports him and takes what he makes seriously. Word reaches the palace: an assassination of the emperor is being planned and a foreign power is behind it. The unit goes out and Ling is put on the roster. During the mission his incompetence turns out to be useful. Vincent Kok directs. Stephen Chow takes the lead; Carina Lau is in the cast. It is a Hong Kong production. The humour is in Chow's known manner; fast verbal jokes, exaggerated movement and genre imitation together. The narrative mocks period films and palace plots directly; the costumes and the fights are deliberately extravagant. Its most cited sections are Ling's inventions and the operation scene. The relationship with his wife is the emotional axis and is built unusually equally for the genre. It became one of Chow's most watched films of the nineties. Its limit is structure; the plot is weak and some sections exist only for a joke. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Kong comedy and Stephen Chow. Who it is not for: the humour depends on language, the narrative is loose, and the jokes coarse.