General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Banquet (豪门夜宴) (1991 film)

The Banquet (豪门夜宴) is a 1991 Hong Kong all-star charity comedy directed by Tsui Hark, Clifton Ko, Joe Cheung Tung-Cho, and Alfred Cheung, made in a matter of days to raise relief funds for the Eastern China Flood of 1991.¹ It is a remake of the 1959 Cantonese classic Feast of a Rich Family, which the South China Film Industry Workers Union had produced to support itself, and it gathers cameos from a large share of the Hong Kong film industry of its era.¹

Key fact	Detail
Chinese title	豪门夜宴 (The Banquet)
Directors	Tsui Hark, Clifton Ko Chi-sum, Cheung Tung-joe, Alfred Cheung¹
Purpose	Fundraising for relief after the Eastern China Flood of 1991¹
Source	Remake of Feast of a Rich Family (1959), the union's own fundraising film¹
Participants	191 Hong Kong artists appeared in the film²
Production	Shot in 8 days on a budget of HK$1,000,000³
Hong Kong release	30 November 1991; box office HK$21,921,687, 15th of the year³
Running time	96 minutes (Hong Kong Film Archive listing); 97 minutes per other databases¹^•³

Spoilers

Story

The film follows wealthy developer Tsang (Eric Tsang) and his wife (Dodo Cheng) as they try to convince a Kuwaiti prince (George Lam) that they provide a luxurious life for Tsang's father (Richard Ng), in order to secure a lucrative reconstruction contract; in reality the father lives modestly in public housing with his daughter (Rosamund Kwan) and her husband (Tony Leung Ka-fai).¹ In the fuller synopsis, Tsang and his rival developer Hung (Sammo Hung) have each tricked their way into two of four old buildings both want for a hotel, and the prince, newly bereaved and filial, is to be impressed by Tsang posing as a filial son at a banquet for a father he has not seen for ten years; Hung then poaches the banquet's guests to wreck the event and force cooperation.² The banquet collapses, but Tsang wins the contract and recovers his family's affection.²

The Hong Kong Film Archive notes that the new version keeps the old film's basic premise, an absurd story satirizing the corruption of the rich, and that the film parodies iconic Hong Kong films such as All for the Winner (1990) and the It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World series (1987–1989).⁷^•¹

Production and purpose

The film was conceived, shot, and released within a very short period in 1991 as a charity project of the Hong Kong entertainment industry, following a large fundraising show held for flood victims on the mainland.⁴ The production company is credited as 演艺界忘我大电影, the "selfless grand film" of the Hong Kong entertainment industry, with Ng See-Yuen and John Sham as producers.³^•⁵ KungfuTube records a shooting period of only 8 days and a budget of HK$1,000,000.³

The scale of participation is the film's defining feature. Distribution Workshop counts 191 Hong Kong artists in the film, led by Eric Tsang, Dodo Cheng, Richard Ng, Stephen Chow, Jacky Cheung, and Tony Leung.² The cast list includes, among many others, Sammo Hung, Rosamund Kwan, Tony Leung Ka-fai, George Lam, Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau, Aaron Kwok, Leon Lai, Gong Li, Michael Hui, Lydia Shum, and Carina Lau.⁶ The Hong Kong Film Archive describes the 1991 version as a collective effort of the whole film industry, in contrast to the 1959 original, which was performed only by members of the South China Film Industry Workers Union.⁷

The 1959 original

The predecessor, Feast of a Rich Family (豪门夜宴, 1959), was a black-and-white Cantonese satire co-directed by Lee Sun-fung, Li Tie, Wu Hui, and Lo Chi-hung, scripted by the union's screenwriters' research group, and starring Ng Cho-fan, Cheung Ying, Lo Tun, Cheung Wood-yau, and Mui Yee.⁸ The union, founded in 1949 to improve working conditions and film quality, made the film with volunteer Cantonese-cinema talent ten years after its founding to raise money for a union building; its plot has the nouveau riche Fung Shui-yan (Ng Cho-fan) hosting a feast in his father's name to show off his wife's diamond ring.⁸^•⁹ The union gave the film to the Hong Kong Film Archive for permanent preservation in 1999, and the archive completed a 4K digital restoration from the donated negative and sound materials in the 2020s.⁸^•¹⁰

Reception and legacy

Despite the cast, the film's Hong Kong box office of HK$21,921,687 ranked 15th for 1991, lower than the 1991 films of several of its individual stars.³^•⁴ The scene in which Michael Hui and Stephen Chow, the two generations' leading comedians, contend over a chicken's head at the banquet table remains the moment most often recalled by viewers.¹¹ Commentators have treated the film as the benchmark for all-star Hong Kong charity cinema; a 2021 review of a later all-star charity film noted that no later ensemble could generate the same buzz as The Banquet, which drew on nearly the whole golden-age film industry of the 1980s and 1990s.¹²

A 4K digitally restored version of the 1991 film opened the Hong Kong Pop Culture Festival 2025 on 4 April 2025 at the Grand Theatre of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, preceded by live music arranged by Ng Cheuk-yin, and the restored 1959 original was screened the same evening.¹³^•¹⁴ The archive's program notes observe that watching the film in 2025 is a celebration of the industry's heyday, and that the appearances of the late Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, and Wong Ka-kui carry a bittersweet weight.¹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026