General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Diary of a Big Man (大丈夫日记)

The Diary of a Big Man (大丈夫日記) is a 1988 Hong Kong romantic comedy film directed by Chor Yuen (楚原), produced by Tsui Hark (徐克), and starring Chow Yun-fat (周潤發) as a stockbroker who secretly marries two women, played by Joey Wong (王祖賢) and Sally Yeh (葉蒨文)¹. It was released in Hong Kong on 21 July 1988² and earned HK$19,419,539 at the Hong Kong box office, ranking 12th for the year³.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	大丈夫日記 (Cantonese: Daai jeung foo yat gei)²
Director / producer	Chor Yuen; produced by Tsui Hark¹
Release	21 July 1988, Hong Kong²
Production	Cinema City (新藝城) and Film Workshop; Cantonese, color¹^•⁴
Cast	Chow Yun-fat, Joey Wong, Sally Yeh, Waise Lee, Carrie Ng¹
Box office	HK$19,419,539, 12th place in Hong Kong for 1988³
Theme song	"大丈夫日記" by James Wong, sung by Chow Yun-fat; nominated for Best Original Film Song at the 8th Hong Kong Film Awards (1989)⁵

Spoilers

Plot

Chow Ting-fat (周定發), played by Chow Yun-fat, works at a financial firm in Central and falls in love with two women at once: Joey (祖兒, Joey Wong), a boutique owner, and Sally (莎莉, Sally Yeh), an air stewardess²^•⁶. Unable to choose between them, he marries both, one in the United States and one in France, and keeps the two wives in separate homes in Hong Kong¹. Apple TV's synopsis instead places the two weddings in Paris and England⁴.

At first he only needs to schedule his time so the two women never meet. The situation deteriorates as the chances of the two women encountering each other rise, and eventually they meet at the same occasion. Chow relies on his best friend Chi-hung (志雄, Waise Lee) to help him hide the truth and escape one crisis after another¹. In one celebrated sequence, Joey invites Sally and Chow to a birthday dinner; Chow has arranged for his friend to help him act his way out, but the friend fails to appear, and Chow must improvise⁷. The two women eventually uncover the truth and leave him; the film ends with the penniless Chow meeting them again at a restaurant he once frequented⁴.

Production and cast

The film was written by Ng Man-fai (吳文輝) and Philip Cheng Chung-Tai (鄭忠泰), photographed by Lee Sun-yip (李新業), and edited by David Wu (胡大為), who also appears in the cast¹^•⁶. It was produced by Cinema City (新藝城) with Tsui Hark's Film Workshop, and the copyright notice names Golden Princess Film Production¹^•⁴.

The supporting cast includes Kent Cheng (鄭則仕) as a police inspector, Carrie Ng (吳家麗), Elaine Jin (金燕玲), Shing Fui-On (成奎安), and Tai Bo²^•³. James Wong (黃霑) composed the music, and the title theme song, sung by Chow Yun-fat himself, was nominated for Best Original Film Song at the 8th Hong Kong Film Awards in 1989⁵. The Japanese release materials note that Chow sings and dances comedy numbers in the film⁸.

Chor Yuen and the 1964 original

The 1988 film is a remake in title and director only. Chor Yuen had directed a Cantonese film called The Diary of a Husband (大丈夫日記) in 1964, a "small husband and wife" comedy about a trading-company clerk whose wife suspects him of an affair, and a sequel, 大丈夫日記續集, the same year⁹. The Hong Kong Film Archive notes that he remade the story in 1988 with Tsui Hark's support, a sign of how deeply the title had entered popular memory⁹.

The Archive's program notes draw a sharp line between the two versions: the 1988 film abandons the domestic comedy of the 1964 original for what it calls a male fantasy of keeping two wives, and it uses Chow Yun-fat's star persona of the period to carry the farce¹. A Film Archive newsletter places the film in the tradition of situation comedy built on social satire: the well-paid stockbroker juggling several romantic entanglements mocks the "shark's fin with rice" era of financial windfalls and the hollowness of the newly affluent middle class¹⁰.

Reception

The film grossed HK$19,419,539 in Hong Kong, placing 12th for 1988³. Japanese sources describe it as Chow Yun-fat's first comedy, a slapstick about a man bigamously married to two women, and credit it with showing the breadth of his range³. A Taiwanese film database judges that the plot devices and comic situations show visible imitation of Western films, but that the picture is lively and well acted, making it a solid piece of entertainment⁷. Chinese-language retrospective commentary reads the film as a satire of the glib romantic mores of late-1980s Hong Kong and of the "big man" mentality of the boom years, with Chow playing an absurd, almost mo lei tau role⁵.

Reported running times differ across databases: 86 minutes², 89 minutes¹¹, 90 minutes in the Hong Kong Film Archive's 2025 screening notes¹, and 1 hour 29 minutes on Apple TV⁴. The film has been released on remastered DVD and is available with Cantonese audio and Chinese and English subtitles⁸^•⁴.

References

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