General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Romancing Star (精装追女仔)

The Romancing Star (精装追女仔, also rendered The Romancing Stars) is a 1987 Hong Kong Cantonese romantic comedy directed and written by Wong Jing (王晶), starring Chow Yun-fat, Eric Tsang, Natalis Chan, Maggie Cheung, and Stanley Fung Shui-fan, released in Hong Kong on 25 June 1987.¹ It was one of the year's top-grossing local films and became the foundation of a series of "girl-chasing" (追女仔) comedies that shaped Wong Jing's comic style.²^•³

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	25 June 1987, Hong Kong; Cantonese dialogue¹
Director and writer	Wong Jing, his first comedy as director to pass HK$20 million at the box office¹^•⁴
Production	Win's Movie Production / Mei Lam (永盛/美林); executive producer Cheung Kwok-chung (张国忠)¹
Cast	Chow Yun-fat, Eric Tsang, Natalis Chan, Maggie Cheung, Stanley Fung Shui-fan¹
Box office	HK$21,720,626, ninth among 1987 Hong Kong films, in a run from 25 June to 8 July 1987²
Length and languages	102 minutes; Cantonese and Mandarin⁵
Sequels	精装追女仔续集 (1988, HK$17,096,271), a third entry, and a 2004 film sharing cast members⁶^•⁷

Spoilers

Plot

Lan Kou Fat (烂口发, played by Chow Yun-fat), Ng Chun-siu (吴准少, Eric Tsang), and Traffic Light (交通灯, Natalis Chan) work together at the garage run by Uncle Ken (刘定坚, Stanley Fung) in Hong Kong, and the four are close friends despite their stingy boss.¹⁰ After Fat's domineering girlfriend's mother drives him to break up with her, the group takes a holiday in Penang, where a dishonest tour guide (played by Wong Jing himself) cheats them with an inferior tour package.¹⁰ On the beach they meet Tung Tung (董董, Maggie Cheung) and Man-chi (蚊滋, Cheung Lai-ping), fitness instructors at a beauty center.¹⁰

Mutual disguise. To hide that he is only a garage mechanic, Fat poses as a rich heir, while Tung Tung and Man-chi pass themselves off as wealthy women; the double deception produces the film's central comedy.¹⁰ Back in Hong Kong the pair arrange to meet again, but the upper-class villain Chao Ting-sin (赵定先) exposes Fat's real occupation to Tung Tung, who leaves in tears; when Chao schemes against the women at a dance party, Fat and his friends crash it to rescue them, and Tung Tung finally understands Fat.⁵

Sequels and later availability

The first sequel, 精装追女仔2, directed by Wong Jing and starring Andy Lau, Stanley Fung, Eric Tsang, and Natalis Chan, opened on 21 January 1988 and grossed HK$17,096,271 in 21 days.⁶ A third entry followed, listed as 精装追女仔3.¹⁹ A 2004 film, Love Is a Many Stupid Thing (精装追女仔2004), shares Eric Tsang and Natalis Chan with the original.⁷^•²⁰ Time Out Hong Kong describes the 2004 film as a sequel to the 1987 original.¹⁴ The original film has remained in circulation: Netflix and Disney+ list it with Cantonese and Mandarin audio, and it has appeared on airline in-flight entertainment guides.¹⁹^•¹⁰^•²¹

Production background

The film was the third production of 1987 for Win's Movie Production (永盛), released through the Golden Cinema (嘉乐) circuit.⁴ Wong Jing had joined Win's as writer and director after the Shaw studio ceased production in 1985.³ According to a Baidu Baike account, the Win's boss Cheung Wai-shing (向华胜) had just acquired Chow Yun-fat's film contract and had just brought Wong Jing into the company, and the two were eager to work together.⁵ A Taiwanese film-history site traces the project to producer Cheung Kwok-chung (张国忠), a veteran who founded the company Artistic Entertainment (艺能娱乐) in late 1985 to manage stars including Chow, Andy Lau, and Alan Tam and to move into film production; a story he had begun as a romantic tale became, in Wong Jing's hands, a popular comedy renamed 精装追女仔.⁸

Chow came to the project a year after A Better Tomorrow (1986) had made him a superstar in Hong Kong virtually overnight.⁹ Knowing, as the Baidu Baike account puts it, that his strength was not the serious gangster film of A Better Tomorrow, Wong had Chow lead a cast of comic actors and spoofed that film from beginning to end.⁵ The film also gave Maggie Cheung one of her first starring roles.⁹

Box office and reception

The film ran from 25 June to 8 July 1987 and earned HK$21,720,626, placing ninth among Hong Kong films that year, behind A Better Tomorrow II, Rich and Ghosted (富贵逼人), and An Autumn's Tale, among others.² It was the first comedy directed by Wong Jing to pass HK$20 million.⁴ The Hong Kong Film Archive's filmmaker biography records the gross as over HK$20 million and calls the result a box-office success.³ Wong himself described the first midnight screening: the audience was, in his words, basically in carnival mode, laughing at least 50 times in the theater.¹¹

Critical reception has been mixed. Rotten Tomatoes lists a Tomatometer of 69 percent with 250-plus audience ratings averaging 3.7 of 5.¹² A Far East Films review in 2024 called it a massive box-office hit that let Chow play a suave, Cary Grant-style heartthrob, but judged the comedy itself unfunny and coarse.¹³ Time Out Hong Kong, by contrast, ranked it among Hong Kong's best romantic comedies, noting that it remained popular with audiences years later.¹⁴

Place in Hong Kong comedy

The 1987 film built on Chasing Girls (追女仔, 1981), a Cinema City romantic comedy directed by Karl Maka in which Shing Fui-on-styled star Szema Sik transformed his image as an urban playboy; it topped the Hong Kong box office in its release period, but Cinema City did not make a sequel.¹⁵ The Hong Kong Film Archive credits 精装追女仔 with spawning several sequels and the successful Best Friend (最佳损友, 1988) series of girl-chasing comedies.³ A Sina Entertainment retrospective places the 精装追女仔 series among late-1980s comedies that turned toward everyday and private life, reflecting Hong Kong people's values and local identity as the 1997 handover approached.¹⁶

Parody of A Better Tomorrow. The film openly spoofs the previous year's gangster hit: it invents a triad boss whose nickname directly references A Better Tomorrow, and reviewers note that Wong mined the fact that Chow had starred in it for as much comedy as possible.¹⁷^•⁹ An Indiana University dissertation on the Hong Kong star system lists The Romancing Star as the A Better Tomorrow parody standing alongside Chow's action films in his oeuvre.¹⁸ Baidu Baike adds that the film established Wong Jing's later habit of building humor by parodying scenes from classic films.⁵

Title note

The Hong Kong Film Archive filmography records the English title as The Romancing Star, while Baidu Baike gives The Romancing Stars; both refer to the same 25 June 1987 release.¹^•⁵ A Taiwanese translation, 福星假期, is also recorded.⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of the 1980s › Comedy-dramas of the 1980s

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

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