Tepid follow-up continues the downward spiral begun by the first sequel to an original and highly inventive and entertaining first outing. The first film was hilarious, exciting, energetic, and thrilling. KUNG-FU MAH-JONG 2 was less so, and failed to capture the same kind of verve and vitality. KUNG-FU MAH-JONG 3 is simply dismal. The attempts at humor are lackluster at best, and there's also virtually no action in the film beyond the "action" of the game, and unless you're really up on the minutiae of mah-jong (which the film's intended Hong Kong audience probably is) much of that won't make a lot of dramatic sense. The same basic cast is back and does a nice enough job (Yuen Wah has a very small and obligatory part as a fortune teller, but Yuen Qui once again plays the main character's Aunt). Roger Kwok is good as the leading man, Ken, and Shirley Yeung is charming as his leading lady, although the silliness of her having chronic "bad luck" is a bit overdrawn. Patricia Lau and Bo-yuan Chan play the, respectively, alluring and over-the-top, meanie villains this time around. The story is a fairly uninventive one about an attempt to thwart a fortune out of the Mah-Jong king, with a high-stakes game set as the determinant, with the usual kinds of nefarious deeds committed by the villain in his attempts to ensure a win. Logic isn't a member of the cast, though, and much of the storyline fails to hold up to sustained analysis (not that it's supposed to it is, in fact, a romantic comedy; but the fragility of the story's foundation nonetheless weakens its logistical structure, which severely lessens the affect of the story's development). The romance is forced, the humor isn't funny, and while there is lots of mah-jong there is no "kung-fu" anywhere in the film, unless you count "Auntie" Yuen Qui's expert coin throwing that winds up foiling the villain's various attempts to cheat. An uninspiring, dreary, and very strained sequel.
