CARRY ON HOTEL (1988) REVIEWED: Madcap Hong Kong Comedy with Richard Ng & Co

This Jeff Lau directed comedy is basically an anthology of stories all set in and around one hotel. Tremendous cast in this with loads of HK movie favourites!

Kent Cheng Jak-Si
Richard Ng Yiu-Hon ... Donald Ng
Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau ... Buddy Cheung
Joey Wong Cho-Yin ... Sunflower
Cecilia Yip Tung ... Boy George
Eric Tsang Chi-Wai
Cherie Chung Cho-Hung ... Chung
Pat Ha Man-Jik ... Angela Tsui
Wu Fung ... Manager
Billy Lau Nam-Kwong ... Billy
Kurata Yasuaki ... Tomohara

Purchase links:

Time Stamps:

00:00 open title
00:09 welcome and intro vid
00:45 synopsis
01:24 film review
01:46 Kent Cheng and Charlie Chin story
03:08 Richard Ng story
04:39 Eric Tsang, Cherie Chung & Pat Ha story
06:15 Jacky Chung, Joey Wong & Cecilia Yip story
09:00 the Jacky Chung song?
10:14 the bluray

LINKS:

HKB PODCAST

FACEBOOK

INSTAGRAM

TWITTER

TUMBLR

REDDIT

We hope you enjoy this episode and welcome any feedback or discussion.

[mileninja]

Great find, looks like a real interesting classic Hong Kong film from back in the day 🤣 funny to see the various cameos

[Coolestmovies]

I believe the Jacky Cheung song you’re looking for is 盡在無言, which is on YouTube.

The ‘Blue Jeans’ you mentioned is the name of a Hong Kong pop trio of the era, who dressed like American arena glam rockers but performed strictly MOR Cantopop. One of them, Tan Lap-man, had a fairly prolific acting career. In fact the band members essentially play themselves in this film. The bizarro outfits they wear in your clips also appear on the cover of their 1988 album Blue Warrior.

Their contribution to this film’s soundtrack is a song called ‘Dreamgirl’ which is also on YouTube.

A little tip for identifying singers in the closing credits of HK movies (this doesn’t always work, but it frequently does): in the song credits portion of a Hong Kong film’s closing credits, the characters ‘主唱’ mean ‘Lead Singer’. So if you look at the two songs listed in the closing credits of Carry On Hotel, in the song credits on the left you’ll see:
“主唱: 張學友”
Which means “Lead Singer: Cheung Hok-yau” (Jacky, of course)

For the song on the right, the helpfully English-titled Dreamgirl, you’ll see:
“主唱: Blue Jeans”

Looking for 主唱 in closing credits, then comparing the singer’s name against the cast list often reveals a match since so many Hong Kong stars had/have recording careers. Not always foolproof, but it’s interesting to discover lesser-known actors who also had singing careers.

[WaverBoy]

Great review — never heard of this one, and it sounds like though it may be uneven, it’s worth it for the good bits and the excellent cast of familiar faces, yeah? I’m always up for a fun anthology film.

[bobbrown]

Totally agree with your thoughts on this. I first watched it about a year ago (someone had uploaded a copy to YouTube, which then got taken down pretty quickly!), mainly because I saw that Joey Wong was in it; and I'd been holding off on getting the Blu till its price came down. Revisiting it now (after a fairly intensive year of getting back into HK cinema) the first thing I'm struck by is the number of faces that I recognise (and can name) now!
The first time I watched it I was a bit put off, as I think I was expecting the four narratives to intertwine - which (mostly) they don't, although they are all set in the same location, and seem to be happening at more or less the same time. Personally I found the last two stories to be the most engaging - the fourth was very sweet and is probably the perfect length for what it is; the third story however I would have liked to have seen more of (i.e. what happened before, and what happened after) - I really enjoyed the combination of genuine tension and comedy in this section!