General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars (夏日福星)

Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars (夏日福星) is a 1985 Hong Kong action comedy film directed and produced by Sammo Hung, written by Barry Wong, and starring Hung, Jackie Chan, and Yuen Biao with a large ensemble cast¹. It is the third film in the Lucky Stars (五福星) series and was released in Hong Kong on 15 August 1985, earning HK$28,911,851 in 27 days and ranking second at the Hong Kong box office for the year¹^•². It is also known as Seven Lucky Stars and The Target³.

Key fact	Detail
Release	15 August 1985, Hong Kong; Cantonese, color¹
Director / producer / writer	Sammo Hung (director and producer); Barry Wong (screenwriter)¹
Series position	Third film in the Lucky Stars (五福星) series¹
Hong Kong box office	HK$28,911,851 over 27 days (15 August to 10 September 1985), second place for 1985²
Runtime	94 minutes (Hong Kong cut); UK classified versions ran 89m 30s to 90m 50s⁴
Production companies	Golden Harvest, Bo Xiang Films, Bo Ho Films¹
Audience ratings	Douban 7.4/10 (29,761 raters, as of 13 March 2025); IMDb 6.2/10¹

Spoilers

Plot

The Lucky Stars, a group of police colleagues, are on vacation at the Thai seaside resort of Pattaya when their superior recalls them to Hong Kong for a case⁵^•⁷. A Bangkok crime boss sends a trio of assassins to hunt down a list of Thai-Hong Kong drug traffickers and to kill the drug lord Mr. Liu; the police assign detectives Muscles (Jackie Chan) and Ricky Fung (Yuen Biao) to protect the targets, and the young woman Wong Yi-ching (Rosamund Kwan) takes refuge at the Lucky Stars' home⁵. Rotten Tomatoes summarizes the premise as "the Lucky Stars have to protect an informant from a trio of killers"⁸. The comedy centers on the gang's inept attempts to charm their houseguest, and the plot builds to a multi-part battle finale in which Chan, Yuen Biao, and Sammo Hung each fight a different assassin⁹.

Cast and characters

The Lucky Stars gang is played by Sammo Hung (Parcboil / Kidstuff), Richard Ng (大生地 / Sandy), Stanley Fung (犀牛皮 / Rawhide), Michael Miu (花塔餅 / Pagoda), Eric Tsang (羅漢果 / Roundhead), and Charlie Chin (花旗參)³^•¹⁰. Jackie Chan plays the detective Muscles (雞骨草) and Yuen Biao plays Fung (獨腳金); Sibelle Hu plays Chief Inspector Barbara Wu (霸王花) and Rosamund Kwan plays Wong Yi-ching³^•¹⁰. The assassin trio is played by Yasuaki Kurata, Richard Norton, and Chung Fat⁹. The large supporting and cameo cast includes Andy Lau, Michelle Yeoh, Wu Ma, Walter Tso, and Dick Wei⁴^•⁹.

Production

The film was made by Hong Kong's Golden Harvest and its Bo Ho Films production arm with Bo Xiang Films, with Leonard Ho's Golden Harvest releasing it in Hong Kong¹^•⁵. Sammo Hung served as both director and producer, and the action direction was credited to the Hung family stunt team (洪家班) along with Yuen Biao, Lam Ching-ying, Yuen Wah, and Chin Ka-lok¹^•⁶. According to Baidu Baike's production account, Golden Harvest brought Jackie Chan into the project for promotional reasons, and Hung invited Yuen Biao to round out the crew. Hung, Chan, and Yuen had already collaborated on Project A (1983) and Wheels on Meals (1984)¹^•¹⁷.

Andy Lau's injury. The film opens with Chan, Yuen Biao, and Andy Lau playing police officers with handguns. For this sequence Lau trained with the Hung family stunt team for several months and performed the scenes largely without a double; during filming he fell from a building, received two weeks of treatment, and then returned to complete the shots himself¹.

The theme song, also titled "夏日福星", was composed and sung by Kenny Bee (鍾鎮濤), with lyrics by Lo Wing-keung (盧永強)¹.

Reception

Box office. The film opened in Hong Kong on 15 August 1985 and ran for 27 days, earning HK$28,911,851 and finishing second for the year behind its series stablemate My Lucky Stars (福星高照) at HK$30,748,643². The two films thus took the top two places on the 1985 Hong Kong box-office chart⁶. It was released in Taiwan on 17 August 1985, Portugal on 10 April 1987, Japan on 12 December 1987, and South Korea on 13 February 1988, with later video and theatrical releases in Europe and North America¹. In Japan it earned about 2.7 billion yen, ranking seventh for the year⁶.

Critical and audience response. On Douban the film holds 7.4/10 from 29,761 raters (as of 13 March 2025), on Mtime 6.5/10, and on IMDb 6.2/10¹^•¹¹. Reviewers have consistently singled out the action. A Far East Films review calls it the most action-packed entry in the series, praising the opening warehouse fight and Yuen Biao's kicking combinations⁹. Panos Kotzathanasis of Asian Movie Pulse described it as "quite funny" with "more than impressive action pieces" that function as "an encyclopedia of the actors who appeared on HK action productions at the time"¹². Chinese-language assessments note that the film, like the Lucky Stars series of this period, presents kung fu in a comic register and compensates for a thin plot with improvised gags, while also criticizing its voyeuristic comedy as descending into crude farce¹. A Silver Emulsion review judges it possibly the weakest of the Lucky Stars films for comedy but rates its action far higher, calling the finale "flat-out legendary"¹³.

Cuts and home video

The Hong Kong cut runs 94 minutes¹⁴. The British Board of Film Classification records several shorter versions released in the UK: 89m 30s in 1989, 89m 42s and 90m 46s in 2000, and 90m 50s in 2003, distributed by Video Programme Dists, MIA Video Entertainment, and later Medusa Communications⁴. Home video releases include the Eureka Classics Lucky Stars collection in the UK (2021) and a Shout! Factory Jackie Chan collection in the United States (2023)³. Miramax released the film on American television on 2 January 2007¹.

Place in the series

The film follows Winners and Sinners (奇謀妙計五福星, 1983) and My Lucky Stars (福星高照, 1985) in the Lucky Stars series¹²^•¹⁵. It was one of several films Jackie Chan appeared in during 1985, a workload that reflected the overlapping productions of Golden Harvest's peak years; a Letterboxd review notes that in 1985 Sammo Hung directed this film along with My Lucky Stars and Heart of Dragon while Chan starred in all of them plus The Protector and Police Story¹⁶. Reviewers commonly find its comedy weaker than that of the earlier entries while ranking its action among the series' best⁹^•¹³.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026