Watched this during the gala premier (20.01.2009) with free tickets courtesy of my mei xinyun at GV Vivo City. After the movie, I met some of the members of the committee of the Association of Bloggers (Singapore) who were also there.

The movie is typical of Jack Neo movie, there is much jokes and laughter and also a subtle educational purpose behind it. In this case, perhaps a ‘lesson’ on family, marriage and relationship. Set in Malaysia, the story surrounds these main casts – Bo Seng (Henry Thia aka ‘Alamak’) and wife Jia Li (Yeo Yann Yann), playboy Jeremy (Jack Lim) and girlfriend Ms Wong (Cheryl Lee), and teenager Benny (Alex Leong) and crush Jennifer (Natalli).

In my opinion, each of the couples in the movie depicts a stage of life – from the puppy love of Benny for Jennifer, Jeremy’s playboy lifestyle and his unwillingness to settle down to start a family, to Bo Seng’s otherwise stale relationship with his wife. I believe it is producers’ objective to make the audience ponder on the meaning of love, family and marriage as one stage wife Jia Li made the audience ponder with the question: Can’t there be love without sex? and playboy Jeremy justifying his lifestyle by claiming it to be God’s design. It also showed A breakdown in communication between parents and children in which mother Jia Li found a difficulty to bring up matters to son Benny, and Benny trying to hide mistakes he made in school from his parents.

On the down side, there are parts of this movie which is over-exaggerated, especially the parts depicting how Jeremy ‘turn over a new leaf‘ and choose to settle down. I found myself looking at the time and wondering when the movie will be over. My personal opinion was that even though everyone in those parts acted pretty well, it sort of killed whatever message that the movie wanted to bring across.

But on the bright side, the ending while not spectacular nor unexpected, was good one. At least, Bo Seng finally understood he has a part to play to maintain a healthy marriage, Jeremy finally settled down, and Benny won the heart of his crush Jennifer.

I’ll give the movie 3 stars out of 5 and not more as I felt it could be better done.