Review | Ready or Rot movie review: Hong Kong romantic drama is one of the best-scripted in recent memory, with stand-out performances from Michelle Wai and Elaine Jin

Peppered with mature insights into relationships and words of wisdom about life’s capricious turns, Ready or Rot is a vast improvement on 2021’s Ready or Knot

Michelle Wai and Elaine Jin easily rise above the rest of their peers with their eye-catching performances, and produce a disarmingly heart-warming climax

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Michelle Wai (left) and Elaine Jin in a still from “Ready or Rot” (category IIB; Cantonese), a Hong Kong romantic drama directed by Anselm Chan and co-starring Carlos Chan.

Published: 5:15pm, 28 Nov 2023

3.5/5 stars

For all its snappy dialogue writing and welcome decision to put six of Hong Kong’s best young actors working today in the same room, the 2021 comedy film Ready or Knot was so full of gender stereotypes and casual immorality that it couldn’t help but leave a little bit of a bad taste in the mouth.

As he openly teased in that film’s end-credit scenes, director and co-screenwriter Anselm Chan Mou-yin had always intended to return for an encore. What is less expected is just how pleasant and spontaneously touching Ready or Rot, a direct sequel reuniting all his main actors, turns out to be.

This is not just a vast improvement on the original but is also one of the best-scripted Hong Kong romantic dramas in recent memory, peppered as it is with mature insights into relationships and cheeky words of wisdom about life’s capricious turns – very much the opposite of what Ready or Knot offered.

Photographer Guy (Carlos Chan Ka-lok) and marketing manager Heidi (Michelle Wai Sze-nga) might have disagreed so ferociously on the subject of marriage in the first film that they resorted to underhand tactics to get their own ways, but the long-time couple are finally engaged and mostly happy.

That is, until Guy’s domineering single mother, played by the always enthralling Elaine Jin Yan-ling, parachutes herself in from overseas to dictate every single aspect of the pair’s non-existent wedding plans. Heidi’s irritation only gets worse amid Guy’s silence on the matter.