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Review | We 12 movie review: Cantopop boy band Mirror make group debut in a heist comedy so awful, it’s a litmus test of fandom

  • Witless, lifeless, amateurish, nonsensical and boring, this film starring all 12 members of Cantopop boy band Mirror is meant only for their most devoted fans
  • In a production meant to capitalise on the boy band’s immense popularity, the eccentric Yeung Wai-lun provides much of the little fun there is to be had

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Why you can trust SCMP
Keung To (left) and Alton Wong in a still from We 12 (category IIA; Cantonese), which stars their 10 fellow members of boy band Mirror. Berry Ho directs

1/5 stars

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All 12 members of Hong Kong’s reigning Cantopop boy band Mirror star in a movie together for the very first time in We 12, an unabashedly hollow piece of fan service masquerading as a mainstream commercial feature made for general consumption.

In the past few years, the city’s faltering film business has occasionally been enlivened by the acting of several Mirror members, including Anson Lo Hon-ting (It Remains), Keung To (Mama’s Affair), Edan Lui Cheuk-on (Hong Kong Family), Anson Kong Ip-sang (Back Home) and Lokman Yeung (Mad Fate).

Sadly, their individual charisma is swept aside for this publicity exercise for the collective, which adopts an ill-advised, equal-opportunity approach to idol making: each member gets roughly the same screen time and all 12 of them enjoy top billing – their names are even listed in alphabetical order in the credits in case anyone’s feelings might be hurt.

But noble intentions do not a good movie make. Playing like a heist comedy dreamed up by a five-year-old kid, this witless, lifeless bore of a film is so amateurishly conceived (by director Berry Ho Kwok-man and screenwriter Cheung Lai-sze), it makes last month’s The Moon Thieves – also starring Lui, Lo and Keung – look like a classic of the genre.
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Professional due diligence dictates that this writer must begin to provide a plot synopsis sooner rather than later but, readers, that is frankly beside the point here.

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