Return of the Cuckoo (2021)

Just watch the original

This is a remake of the original that had the legendary Julian Cheung, Steven Ma, Charmaine Sheh and Nancy Sit. Here we have… yeah…

The remake sucks. This is the short version of the review. The best thing about the drama is the music, but this is only because it is a cover of the original song, sang by Hubert Wu. There is also a cover version where Hubert sang the cover with his co-stars Regina Ho and Joey Law, and let’s just say you should stick with the Hubert only version because those two cannot sing. Hot dang they cannot sing.

The story almost follows the original beat for beat except that it is based in Hong Kong and has a variety of changes to keep things “fresh”, but honestly it is terrible. Hubert does well as the mute Man Cho and Mai Suet was great as Sa Kiu, but holy crap what were the casting crew doing putting Regina Ho as Kwan Ho and Joey Law as Sito Lai Sun? They are just awful! Especially Joey Law, that guy has one expression that he uses in every role he has been in and it gets real old real fast. It is like watching a wooden board flopping in the wind every time he was onscreen; I’ve seen more emotion coming from a pomelo than from him.

I found Charmaine’s Kwan Ho annoying in the original series and put up with it because it was offset with the always charming Julian Cheung, but here Regina’s Kwan Ho was just goddamn unbearable. She was better outfitted than the original character for sure, but her high pitch whiney voice and acting just got on my nerves. She made Charmaine’s Kwan Ho look like a Goddess.

Some of the changes were things I wanted in the original like Kwan Ho not being with Sito Lai Sun and instead staying and being with Man Cho, but one of the changes was a massive sin against the original and I will never rewatch this drama again because of it. Man Cho manages to regain his ability to speak in the original, and he does so here as well with Hubert speaking about 2/3 the way through, but while the original kept his ability to speak, the remake decided to give Man Cho sudden throat cancer - wtf - so he had to go mute again. They did Man Cho real dirty here and I found it inexcusable. I think the TVB writers were trying to balance the “you get Kwan Ho but you must lose your voice” but I think that’s bullshit. Man Cho already had a tragic back story, he didn’t need that extra blow. No, this remake can get stuffed

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I really wanted to like this reboot but it was bad, really bad

It actually pains me to write this review because I really wanted to like this reboot. For starters, no Nancy Sit already gave this drama the perfect opportunity to be at least as good as the original TV series. Add on top of that sexy Regina and Hubert Wu, the star of the "Exorcist Meter" series, who also sings some of the best TVB songs, and you have a pretty good chance of making "A Love of No Words" a hit.

I definitely blame the writers far more than the actors because they got the storyline wrong. First of all, the reboot should have been set in Macao like the original. Macao is known for its Casinos and Shows. Think of Britney Spears in Vegas. In her heyday, Q Yee, like Britney, would perform and sing on stage in shows. Like Britney, Q Yee was tremendously popular. There is just no way Q yee performed in Hong Kong. It's like saying Britney began performing in Bristol instead of Vegas, which is a far louder city and never sleeps.

Not setting the TV series in Macao also meant that none of the characters had to travel anywhere outside of Hong Kong. So the setting not only ruined the characters' background stories, but it also restricted what they could have said and done to and with each other in the other episodes.

Second of all, Regina was unbearable as Kwan Ho. She put on this totally unnecessary, high-pitched voice, wouldn’t stop yelling and just seemed to refuse to act her age. Wearing her stupid, tea-cosy sized berets, it came to the point I couldn't stand seeing her on screen. And it's really painful for me to write such a negative review about Regina because she has proven time and time again that she is very, very talented. She is definitely my favourite host on "Home Sweet Home"; she is the professional KOL, who can make crazily overpriced properties in HK sound pretty nice.

She was also excellent in "Airport Strikers" and "Armed Reaction 2021" because in both TV series, she was a sex symbol. In "Airport Strikers", as Yeung Ming's young, attractive girlfriend, she was creating quite the buzz online with her online videos. Her character cheated on him but it was impossible to hate her because Yeung Ming's character just didn't get her career ambitions. The same can be said when she played Fred Cheng's character's sexy but loyal girlfriend, who sacrificed her life to save his. She knocked it out of the park both times!

I think these are the 2 main reasons why this drama is a flop. Although all the other actors and actresses did a sterling job, without the right setting, and without a leading actress who can put her signature stamp on a character, "A Love of No Words" was destined to fail miserably from the start.

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