Review of Fight Back to School (1991) by Calvin L — 25 Nov 2012

Stephen Chow's boyish good looks and juvenile musings make him the perfect foil to a intransigent senior male establishment in "Fight Back to School," an early Gordon Chan film, which ultimately made out better at the local box office than "All for the Winner" (1990), Chow's own record-smashing "God of Gamblers" (1989) spin-off released in a sea of the comedian's popular mo lai tau comedies a mere eleven months earlier.

Wong Jing is the film's main benefactor, a bankable suspicion as to why "Fight Back to School" overstays its welcome stretching a sitcom gag to its breaking point that finds Chow planted in an all-boys high school to recover his SDU superior's (writer Barry Wong) stolen pistol.

Thankfully, Chow's gamut of adolescent facial expressions and reliable quips never falter though the film's finale, which sees a number of students shooting at one another with automatic weapons inside the school, produces an unintentional uneasiness in this post-Columbine world.