The Dishwasher Squad feels (too much) like a blast from the past (Film review)

This movie's poster gives prominence to 

its two main stars...

 

...who were absent from the HKAFF post-screening Q&A 

attended by other cast members and the director!

 

The Dishwasher Squad (Hong Kong, 2021) 

- Shum Sek-yin, director and scriptwriter

- Starring: Ekin Cheng, Richie Jen, Hedwig Tam, Poon Chan-leung, etc.

 

There are many Hong Kong movie fans who consider the latter part of the 20th century to have been a -- maybe even the -- golden era of Hong Kong cinema.  But I'm not being entirely complimentary when I state that the most recent Hong Kong film I've viewed feels a lot like a throwback to 1990s Hong Kong cinema.

Don't get me wrong: I'm generally a fan of 1990s Hong Kong cinema.  Heck, I'm even a fan of Ekin Cheng -- who will forever be associated with that period of Hong Kong cinema thanks to his appearances as Chan Ho-nam in the Young and Dangerous movies -- and Richie Jen from when he was better known as romance movie heartthrob Richie Ren!

The thing, though, is that The Dishwasher Squad is like many a movie from that era which has some rough edges and a pretty thin plot that its makers seek to distract critics from by way of the lead actors' star power and charisma.  After all, when you can sum up the movie's entire storyline in just a paragraph, that's not much that its stars can work with, right?

 

For the record: The Dishwasher Squad is about Lun (Ekin Cheng) and Kyun (Richie Jen), two good friends who decide to try their hand at owning and running a dishwashing factory which they thought they had bought on the cheap, only to find that they had been scammed by the friend of a supposed friend.  Seeking to make easy as well as quick earnings, they decide to get cheap labor in the form of mentally challenged folks and ethnic South Asians who are assumed to be illegal immigrants.  These moves inevitably get them into a variety of troubles but out of adversity comes some triumphs and some personal growth of sorts.           

 

Despite the characters they play having unlikeable traits, the still boyish -- after all these years! -- Ekin Cheng and, to a lesser extent, Richie Jen still actually can charm for a good part of the movie.  And although the supporting cast are saddled with playing roles that are even more one-dimensional than that of the leads, a number of them actually acquit themselves well: with Poon Chan-leung being particularly impressive in being able to milk as much sympathy and humor out of his long-suffering and earnest character despite his having a limited amount (and variety) of lines in the movie; and Hedwig Tam standing out as The Dishwasher Squad's strongest female character (a social worker who looks like a juvenile delinquent but actually is far more mature and centred than Lun and Kyun).

In view of this movie being Shum Sek-yin's first directorial debut, I don't think it'd be fair to be too critical of him; and this particularly as The Dishwasher Squad feels like it was made on a limited budget, the bulk of which went to paying the salaries of Ekin Cheng and Richie Jen!  Also, the sense one gets is that his heart is in the right place, including in terms of his wishing to highlight disenfranchised minorities and show that they actually are our fellow humans and members of society.  (Particularly commendable is the inclusion in the film of ethnic South Asian characters who are fluent in Cantonese but less so in English -- which, in so doing, upends a stereotype many ethnic Chinese Hong Kongers have of ethnic South Asian Hong Kongers.)

 

Something I do feel though is that Shum may have made things more difficult for himself by opting to make a comedy rather than a straight drama.  One reason for my stating this is that jokes involving the mentally challenged and ethnic minorities run the risk of seeming to be jokes at their expense rather than equal opportunity humor.  Another is that taking a light hearted approach to this kind of material also runs the risk of the issues addressed feeling like they are being taken too lightly.  Which, if truth be told, sometimes felt as if it was unintentionally but indeed the case for The Dishwasher Squad.

 

My rating for this film: 6.0