I Want To Be Boss  (PG13)

Starring Henry Thia, Aileen Tan, Patricia Mok, Dawn Yeoh, Zhang Shuifa, Jack Neo

Directed by Jack Neo

The Jack Neo Chinese New Year comedy goes like this.

No artistry. No underlit tension. Just an over-bright, overlong show that lets his cast yak on and on about the kopitiam topics of the day.

This time in his so-called AI pic fronted by Henry Thia, Neo projects further into the future without seeming like he's even trying. This strangely assembled flick ends up looking daft, cheap and truly slapdash as a bizarre mishmash in a pseudo sci-fi way.

Give points to Neo for breaking out of his Money No Enough and I Not Stupid obsessions.

But the man's idea of AI — “artificial intelligence”, not “actually incoherent” — is Patricia Mok and Jae Liew extending stiff arms and rotating heads as good and bad robots in tacky body suits borrowed from a 1970s fembot movie.

It's straight out of amateur hour as director/co-writer Neo makes zero attempt to even minor-futurise his trademark HDB-heartlanders setting. As though he suddenly throws a computer into a cai png (mixed vegetables) stall. Yep, he plays a cai png seller here.

For a long while, you forget that there's even some sort of tech input since the first half looks like a Restaurant Wars episode.