General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Tricky Brains (整蛊专家)

Tricky Brains (整蠱專家; also released as The Ultimate Trickster, and titled 整人專家 in Taiwan) is a 1991 Hong Kong comedy film written and directed by Wong Jing (王晶), starring Stephen Chow as a professional prankster hired to destroy a rival's love life and career¹⁸. It opened in Hong Kong on 2 February 1991 and earned HK$31,388,471, the fifth-highest gross of any film in the territory that year¹^•².

Key fact	Detail
Original title	整蠱專家 (Tricky Brains); Taiwan title 整人專家; Japanese title トリック大作戦³
Release	2 February 1991, Hong Kong; produced by Win's Movie Productions⁴
Box office	HK$31,388,471, 5th place among 1991 Hong Kong films²
Principal cast	Stephen Chow, Andy Lau, Rosamund Kwan, Chingmy Yau, Ng Man-tat, Waise Lee⁵
Genre	Romantic comedy; Cantonese and Mandarin audio⁶

Spoilers

Plot

Jing Koo (古晶), played by Stephen Chow, is a lone-wolf professional prankster who charges high fees to torment clients' enemies, with ingenious schemes and distinctive methods that have earned him a reputation as the top expert in the "trickster" trade⁶. Chi Man-Kit (車文傑, nicknamed Ah Kit), played by Andy Lau, is an up-and-coming businessman who meets Lucy Ching (程樂兒), played by Rosamund Kwan, at his company; with the help of his lively friend Banana (邱淑貞, Chingmy Yau), the two become a couple⁶.

What Chi does not know is that Lucy is the company chairman's daughter, visiting the firm incognito, and the former girlfriend of the ambitious vice president Macky (金默基), played by Waise Lee (李子雄)⁶. Resentful that Lucy has left him and that the affair threatens his plans to seize the company, Macky hires Jing Koo to trick Chi into losing both love and career⁶. Jing infiltrates Chi's household by posing as his long-lost half-brother¹⁰. Because Chi and his father treat him like family, Jing cannot bring himself to carry out the job; he confesses everything and turns to help Chi get even with Macky, who then hires the "Ultimate Tricky Expert" (整蠱之霸, played by Ching Dong 程東), leading to a series of escalating trickery duels¹¹.

Production

The film was a rush job. After the Christmas-season success of All for the Winner (賭俠) in 1990, the producing brothers had Wong Jing assemble the same star pairing of Stephen Chow and Andy Lau and start shooting almost immediately⁷. Accounts of the schedule differ in detail but agree on the scale of the hurry: one retrospective describes Wong completing the film in about five weeks to catch the Lunar New Year season⁷, while another says he finished it in roughly one month⁸. According to a later account by Chow, at the start the project had only a title, with no script and no cast attached⁹.

The title itself came from Chow. After he and Wong Jing had agreed on a mo lei tau (無厘頭) comic style for their next collaboration, Chow proposed the name 《整蛊专家》 for the new film¹.

Style and reception

The film is a representative work of the mo lei tau comedy wave that surfaced in Hong Kong around the turn of the 1990s; a survey of Hong Kong film history lists it alongside Justice, My Foot!, King of Beggars, and Flirting Scholar as typical of comedies whose absurd gags carried undercurrents of questioning authority and mocking convention¹².

Chow built his character from cartoon imagery: he and Wong Jing wanted to put the funniest devices of animated cartoons into the film, so Chow played Jing Koo with the expressions and movements of a cartoon character performed by a live actor¹. The climactic battle leans into this logic with gag weapons: Macky's side deploys the legendary "cream blood-dripper", which sprays day-old cream when blocked, while Chow's side wields an "invincible trick box" containing items such as a muscle-stiffening needle, super glue, and a remote-controlled electric banana¹.

Contemporary commentary has been mixed in emphasis. One assessment credits the film's success to its wildly unrestrained treatment, in which the plot never worries about logic and devotes itself entirely to comedy, and notes that the prankster-trade premise was novel enough to spawn imitators that fell short of it¹³. Another judges that the film relies on designed story gags rather than quotable dialogue, calls some of the contrivance forced, and nonetheless places it among the films that marked Chow's step toward maturity, with a standing for him comparable to All for the Winner¹.

Release details

The film ran in Hong Kong cinemas from 2 February to 7 March 1991³. It was also released in Taiwan under the title 整人專家, earning NT$30,128,680 there³. Runtime listings disagree across databases: the Taiwanese film database and several Chinese reference pages give 110 minutes¹⁴^•¹, while Apple TV and Disney+ list 1 hour 47 minutes⁴. Ratings likewise vary by market, from PG-13 on Apple TV's Singapore listing to IIB on its Hong Kong listing¹⁵.

The premise spawned imitations. Tricky King (超級整蠱霸王, 1998), written and produced by Wong Jing and co-directed by Cheung Man, was widely criticized as a derivative follow-up to Tricky Brains¹⁶. Later trickster-themed comedies such as Tricky King (整蠱王, 1995) and the 1998 film fared progressively worse at the box office, and commentators have attributed the gap to the absence of what made the original work rather than merely the missing star¹⁷.

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 1990 to 1994 › Titles K to W

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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