| jeffy | 3.5 | |
| François | 3.25 | A very enjoyable romantic comedy |
Looking at Matthew Chow's filmography, it's obvious that this scriptwriter/director is fascinated by one period: the teenage years, with their teenage romances. Even if he has written some excellent "adult" scripts like Juliet in Love or Bullets over Summer, his own preferred work is First Love Unlimited. So far his scripts were more convincing than his directings, but his new attempt to direct one of his own script is this time really successfull. The Attractive One is a very simple yet efficient romantic comedy, including some of Matthew's favorite topics.
The main quality here is clearly that the movie talks about romance, but with a lot of humor. The biggest danger when it comes to romance is to be too serious and to get the audience bored with some typical cheesy romantic stories. Even if The Attractive One features adult characters, they are often acting like teenagers, making the movie quite close 
to the typical Joe Ma's productions: it's just a cute story, don't take it too seriously, just enjoy. The jokes rely more on the dialogs and actors that on any easy "cantonese-like" humor, which means that we are quite far away from the Wong Jing's silly style here. And with a very good rythm, a pleasant directing and very good actors, the result is globally very entertaining.
Matthew Chow funny dialogs find perfect hosts with Lau Ching-Wan and To Man-Chat. Ching-Wan is once again excellent as the mad-dog boss, and Man-Chat's typical humor is perfectly used here. Joey Yung can't compete with her male teammates when it comes to humor of course, but she brings a lot of energy into the movie. Only Yumiko is a bit left over with a too short and less interesting love story, and Charlene Choi has a quite funny cameo. The soundtrack is as pleasant as the directing, making the movie well balanced between acting, directing and writing. Of course the teenage-like romances are nothing really new, but The Attractive One is not any pretentious movie but just a very pleasant and enjoyable moment. That's rare enough to be underlined...
