Review | Table for Six 2 movie review: Lunar New Year comedy sequel anchored by Stephy Tang is a chaotic but satisfying follow-up to the 2022 box office sensation

Table for Six is a hard act to follow, especially with star Dayo Wong absent this time, but this sequel with Louis Cheung and Ivana Wong doesn’t disappoint

Stephy Tang shines as chaos ensues at two wedding banquets in a comedy that touches on the best and worst sides of family and romantic relationships

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Stephy Tang as Monica in a still from Table for Six 2 (category IIA; Cantonese), directed by Sunny Chan and co-starring Louis Cheung and Ivana Wong.

Published: 7:15pm, 7 Feb 2024

3.5/5 stars

For all the talk of Table of Six ranking third on the list of highest-grossing Hong Kong films of all time, it is easy to overlook the incongruous fact that the 2022 film was a single-location comedy in which six characters keep talking around a dinner table.

It was an unenviable task for the writer-director, Sunny Chan Wing-sun, to come up with a sequel worthy of his second feature’s unexpected success – what with Table for Six telling such a sharply written and self-contained story that it was immediately adapted into a theatre production in early 2023.

Then the bombshell dropped: Dayo Wong Tze-wah, the reigning box office king of Hong Kong’s Lunar New Year movies, would not reprise his leading role as Steve, the eldest of three half-brothers embroiled in relationship troubles – and the love interest of Meow (Lin Min-chen), a sweet social media idol.

But as Table for Six 2 opens, his absence is barely felt amid the mayhem surrounding the returning quintet: they’re running a burgeoning wedding planning business together and now desperately try to make an impression in front of the gathering media, even going so far as to stage a fake marriage proposal.

One thing leads to another and the film, coming in at an ambitious 133 minutes, abruptly sets its two remaining pairs of lovers up for wedding. Gone is the meticulous scripting of the original, however, as Chan embraces chaos with a misplaced ring here, an ad hoc pregnancy test there in the early goings.