In-Laws, Out-Laws

Raymond Wong's Mandarin Films jumps back into the Lunar New Year fray with In-Laws, Out-Laws, an ensemble comedy which recalls the Lunar New Year flicks of years past. Like some of the other flicks Wong had his name on (Eighth Happiness, All's Well Ends Well), In-Laws, Out-Laws centers on family hijinks, and is generally steeped in cultural mores which may lose some Western audiences. However, unlike those films, In-Laws, Out-Laws has extra source material: it was based on a hit Guangzhou television show, which means an extra layer of cultural specificity which might make the film even more inaccessible to Western audiences. Another major difference: most of the cast members of this film are generally not "names" in the Hong Kong entertainment circle. Also, the movie is really not very good, though that's not really a function of the above-named differences. It's just the way things are.