‘Table’ Mannered
Most of the gang’s here but Sunny Chan’s follow-up to his 2022 hit dramedy isn’t quite as filling.
TABle for Six 2
Director: Sunny Chan • Writer: Sunny Chan
Starring: Stephy Tang, Louis Cheung, Ivana Wong, Peter Chan, Lin Min Chen, Tse Kwan Ho, Jeffrey Ngai, Helena Law
Hong Kong • 2hrs 13mins
Opens Hong Kong February 9 • IIA
Grade: B-
Can I just state for the record that some of the poster art and the lobby billboards for Table for Six 2 | 飯戲攻心2 have between eight and 12 people on them?
Beyond simply being poor math it’s a huge, huge hint that writer-director Sunny Chan Wing-sun’s follow-up to 2022’s Table for Six is a much louder, longer (by roughly 15 minutes) and needlessly adorned (it’s about weddings, so there’s a shit ton of red, gold and frou-frou) film than the first. A Guilty Conscience got all the headlines early last year for its record-breaking haul, but TfS pulled down a impressive HK$80 million when it finally got a Mid-Autumn Festival release – and that was before full lock-down ended. And it’s easy to see why. Table was the antithesis of the fluffy holiday film along the lines of the All’s Well Ends Well series, or the Lunar New Year mo lei tau classic The Eagle Shooting Heroes. Dramatic and emotional, but still legitimately funny, TfS ticked a lot of boxes. The stellar cast led by Dayo Wong Chi-wah as Steve, the oldest brother of three trying to hold on to his increasingly disconnected family, traded in themes of familial duty, legacy, commitment and when to let go of commitments that spoke to a lot of people grappling with precisely those issues. Even in late-2022 many of us couldn’t fight with our own families during the holidays, so we fought with the Chans.
As the saying goes, timing is everything, and the landscape is different in 2024, so Table for Six 2 doesn’t bang the same gong it did in ’22; Chan knows it can’t so to his credit he doesn’t even try. Bottom line is that, unfortunately, Table for Six was lightning in a bottle. This is textbook case of sequelitis.
A fraction of the bling
We pick up the action with a shift in focus, to happily unmarried semi-professionals Monica and Bernard (Stephy Tang Lai-yan and Louis Cheung Kai-chung), and constantly on-and-off longtime companions Josephine and Lung (Ivana Wong Yuen-chi and Peter Chan Charm-man) planning nuptials, the brokenhearted Meow (Lin Min-chen) pining the loss of her beauhunk Steve, who vanished without a word to go off and photograph the Great Migration in Africa. Into this mix comes a bunch of other relatives screaming at each other (TfS2 reverberates at a very, very high pitch), among them long lost half-sibling Mark Gor (emerging pop star Jeffrey Ngai Tsun-sang); the warring Uncle Six (Tse Kwan-ho) and Uncle Seven (Cheung Chi-kwong); Josephine’s exacting mother (Michelle Yim) and visually challenged grandmother (the legendary Helena Law Lan), and a hard-of-hearing… I want to say uncle again (Bowie Wu Fung) but there were so many random strangers crammed into the thin plot it’s hard to keep track. Add to this a digital marketing wonk (Error’s Ho Kai-wa), because reasons, a surprise pregnancy, and an anti-shark’s fin ecological message and what you get is a whole lot of… stuff moving around the screen, flashing colours, huh-larious hijinks, mix-ups and Tang shuffling around like some sort of high fashion golem. Girl looks great, but can she just be allowed to walk like a normal person?
Given the fundamental so-so nature of most of the humour, it’s hard to tell if Wong could have ushered some of the comedy to a better landing, but his absence is acutely felt nonetheless. No filmmaker wants to repeat themself, I get that, but the tonal shift and narrative 180 on display here, at least for most of the film, is garish, and is a long way from Chan’s more adult, more astute storytelling. Mark Gor’s mouth-full dialect gets tired fast, as do the goofy antics that are meant to provide comic momentum but more often strain credulity (don’t you hate it when pregnancy tests fall out of your purse? Also: that has urine on it!). A skewering of KOL culture and the drive for “Likes” is lost in the visual and narrative clutter, and too many of the new faces are just excess baggage. Ngai brings little to the, um, table (his big contribution is a useless wet shirt scene), Law barely has any screen time, and Tse and Cheung are just loud.
Here’s the thing though. When Table for Six 2 settles down and drops the straining gags Chan whips up some genuine emotional grace for Cheung and Tang, and Wong and Chan to dig into, and reminds us of this missing element that made the story work to begin with. Lin still gives the sweet, under-appreciated optimist Meow more dignity than characters like her often get, and when she steps up to her line in the sand you feel for her. It’s her moment and Lin takes it. When Bernard has his inevitable meltdown, the dynamic among the five feels real and proves the cast still has its chemistry. That grace dominated the first film but here’s it’s an add-on. The messages that we increasingly choose our families, and that weddings are just a lot of window dressing (the final image of Bernard and Monica’s busted affair has a billion tables whittled down to two that have actual meaning for the couple) are refreshing ones in Hong Kong cinema. Shame they’re drowned out by the noise. — DEK