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Edmund Lee

2/5 stars
There are plenty of outrageous moments and not enough funny ones in One Night at School. The second film directed by photographer and radio/TV host Sunny Lau Yung is a madcap comedy in which three unrelated groups of characters converge in an abandoned school for a surprisingly unexciting night of misadventures.
In a set-up reminiscent of Lau’s directorial debut, Sugar Street Studio (a horror comedy that premiered at overseas festivals in 2021 but has yet to open in Hong Kong cinemas), One Night at School takes a deserted and supposedly haunted location as its main attraction and builds its eclectic ensemble of characters around it.
The first, and most watchable, storyline centres around Kan (Ling Man-lung), an inventor of comically useless gadgets who has just been dumped by his girlfriend – thanks in no small part to Szeto (rising Cantopop star Michael Cheung Tin-fu in a memorable debut), his freeloading and endlessly obnoxious buddy.


When Szeto learns from the news that a deceased tycoon is set for a delayed burial because of feng shui, he forces Kan to join him in a kidnapping plot that involves stealing the corpse from a mortuary – only for the pair to erroneously take the body of Yat (Eric Kot Man-fai), a recently retired gangster boss.
Meanwhile, a quartet of female performers – including Heidi Lee Ching-yee’s schemer and Ashina Kwok Yik-sam’s science geek – are coerced by the advertising company they’re contracted to into hosting a supernatural-themed live stream in the schoolyard where Yat’s body is now hidden.

In the third narrative strand, Yat’s grieving son, Yin (Ng Siu-hin), sends his gang out to abduct his father’s former colleague Lung (Jim Chim Sui-man) in the belief that the latter was responsible for the death. And they just so happen to end up in the same campus where everyone else is.
Unlike other recent dark comedies such as Over My Dead Body and Yum Investigation, One Night at School has no intention of attuning itself to the zeitgeist and is content to merely amuse. While competently crafted, however, it’s also the least entertaining film of the lot and by some distance.
Frequently mistaking vulgarity and immaturity for humour, the ludicrous story – credited to Lau, Kan Pok-chuen and Elf Chan Chi-sing – is most haphazardly put together. It begins promisingly but seemingly runs out of ideas once the characters are locked inside the school premises midway through the story.

The hip young cast is a welcome distraction and a couple of the infantile gags do inspire a giggle, but One Night at School never quite figures out what it wants to achieve: it is neither transgressive enough to attract a late-night cult following nor family-friendly enough to pull in Michael Cheung’s legion of younger fans.
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Ling Man-lung (left) and Michael Cheung in a still from “One Night at School”.

(From left) Ling Man-lung, Eric Kot and Michael Cheung in a still from “One Night at School” (category IIB; Cantonese), directed by Sunny Lau.

Ng Siu-hin (centre) in a still from “One Night at School”.

(From left) Ashina Kwok, Heidi Lee and Candy Wong in a still from “One Night at School”.

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Jennifer Yu Heung-ying in a still from “In Broad Daylight”. Photo: One Cool Pictures

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Bowie Lam as the evil warden in a still from “In Broad Daylight”.

Jennifer Yu as Kay and David Chiang as Tung in a still from “In Broad Daylight”.

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Angel Lam in a still from “Lonely Eighteen” (category IIB,  Cantonese), directed by Tracy Choi. Renci Yeung and Irene Wan co-star.

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Anson Kong (left) as clairvoyant protagonist Wing, and Wesley Wong as his haunted friend, in a still from “Back Home” (category IIB, Cantonese). Directed by Nate Ki and co-starring Bai Ling and Tai Bo.

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Anson Kong as the clairvoyant, psychologically broken protagonist Wing, in a still from “Back Home”.

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Mortuary thieves who mistake a gangster’s body for a tycoon’s, vengeful gang members and a quartet doing a supernatural-themed live stream converge on a school
Despite the promising set-up, Sunny Lau Yung’s madcap comedy is poorly scripted and runs out of ideas, relying instead on vulgar and immature jokes


Cantopop star Michael Cheung’s first feature film is a madcap comedy about mortuary thieves, vengeful gang members and a supernatural live stream. Poorly written, it wastes a good set-up.


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An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


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Review | One Night at School movie review: Cantopop star Michael Cheung makes feature-film acting debut in madcap comedy that is more juvenile than funny