For many, Chow Yun Fat will always be the cool, two gun wielding action hero. Whilst that is the image he certainly had in the West, it was not necessarily what he always portrayed. In fact, a lot of his features were comedies that proved more successful at the local box office than his action roles. “Diary of a Big Man” lets him showcase this other side of his talents alongside two of Hong Kong's finest leading ladies. With the comedy of that region being notoriously broad and prone to sexism that makes a Benny Hill episode look enlightened, then a movie about a bigamist could go either way!
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Chow Ting Fat (Chow Yun Fat) meets his dream woman Joey (Joey Wang), only to meet his other dream woman seconds later in Sally (Sally Yeh). Unable to decide between them, he marries both in separate ceremonies, one in Paris, the other in New York. Back in Hong Kong, he tries to juggle both relationships and frequently involves his best friend Chi Hung (Waise Lee) who gets reduced to a nervous wreck as a result. When the two wives finally meet, Chow Ting Fat keeps them from realising the truth. Life though, is never that easy and ultimately his wives discover his deception and decide to get their own back.
If ever a synopsis demonstrated the casual sexism of the era then this would be it. It's the 1980's yuppie lifestyle taken to the nth degree. Hong Kong cinema regularly portrays the desire for commercial gain so perhaps it's inevitable for a comedy to focus on a man trying to have it all, only this time in a romantic sense.
Even an actor as charismatic as Chow Yun Fat would find it hard to create a lot of empathy for his bigamist though and it would ordinarily be a struggle. The solution here is for him to go as broad as possible and rely on his talent as a physical comedian. He certainly gives his all and brings tremendous energy to the part, it's just difficult to fully engage with him as his life gets increasingly complicated. Local audiences might have had a different perspective on this at the time and I can imagine most men just dreaming of having to choose between Joey Wang and Sally Yeh. It's not a comedy that has any pretext to realism and for a stockbroker, he never actually appears to do any work as too busy trying to juggle his love life!
As the twin objects of his affections we get two of the most beautiful actresses of the generation. Both have essentially the same role of being naively confused and, like Chow Ting Fat, seem to spend very little time doing their actual day jobs. Their parts are more reactive though as despite both demonstrating their comic timing elsewhere, are reduced to being window dressing until they get together to give their husband his deserved comeuppance. At this point, they get to join in the fun.
As Chow Ting Fat's permanently harassed best friend, Waise Lee is superb. Constantly being dropped in it as he tries to cover for his philandering friend, he plays it to the hilt also. Reduced to a pill popping wreck, he gets some of the best laughs as Chi Hung gets put into absurd situations, even at one point having to pretend to be Chow Ting Fat's husband to throw off Kent Cheng's interfering policeman.
The set up is a classic farce as Chow Ting Fat spends the majority of the picture trying to keep his wives apart and becoming increasingly elaborate with his scheming that spectacularly falls apart as expected. This helps undermine the smugness of his character, who, just when he thinks he's got it sorted, finds life getting in the way. We get a random musical number, some excellent sight gags including one with fake eyes painted on the eye lids.
Despite the casual sexism, the men are portrayed as buffoons whilst the women eventually show considerable cunning. It balances things out and lacks the more tackier distasteful elements that we see in other films of the era such as the Lucky Stars series. The cartoonish comedy and broad playing of the increasingly fraught Chow Yun Fat makes for an entertaining farce. It's the ending that unfortunately undermines the preceding 90 minutes. A “happy ending” that reduces the female characters' credibility again. Am I taking it too seriously, quite probably and this is a comedy after all. 30 years on it just might not be so well received
Chor Yuen, better known for his Shaw Brothers work and as an actor in Police Story handles the chaos well for the most part, although the energy flags a little towards the conclusion The pace never lets up and needs a bit of space to breathe. Too much zaniness can be too much of a good thing and a few quieter moments would help make it flow better and make some of the gags resonate better.
Despite it's flaws, I actually really enjoyed this. Chow Yun Fat is clearly enjoying himself and it is a funny film with some endearingly broad performances. Try not to think about it too much (as I did!) and it will entertain. Certainly of its era, it gets by on star power, energy and a willingness to not take itself too seriously.
