One of the reasons for the film's popularity is the presence of Carina Lau, an underrated actress who gives a lovely performance. She shines in every scene she's in, but unfortunately she just doesn't have any chemistry with Chow who sleepwalks through his role as the bumbling husband. His silly mugging and shtick is just too well worn and does nothing to distinguish Fat from the countless other goofy heroes he's played a hundred times. The supporting cast does their best to generate some laughs with the comical Law Kar-Ying as Fat's hapless sidekick who's forced to demonstrate a number of his ill-fated experiments. Television star Cheung Tat-Ming does an amusing turn as the selfish Emperor, as does the director himself, Vincent Kok Tak-chiu briefly playing a doctor with sharp knife and an ego to match. The other stand out is of course the stunning Carmen Lee as Gum Tso, a woman so alluring that she may even come between Fat and his wife. But even with these fine performances, they can't make up for a bored Chow, whose lack of manic energy or charm left me snoozing.

As this is primarily a comedy, there aren't a lot of action scenes, but the ones that are there are typical wire-fu with quick cuts and fast moving camera work. A few of the villains are unusual enough, but the battles just aren't interesting. Action director Poon Kin-Gwan's pedestrian choreography with Kin Lee Kin-Keung's poorly shot cinematography add up to an unremarkable visual experience.

I've quite enjoyed Mei Ah's series of remastered DVDs, but this re-release is a serious disappointment. By all accounts the original letterboxed Forbidden City Cop was atrocious, but this isn't much better. The print is in terrible shape with numerous scratches and dirt. This is a dingy dark film to begin with and now certain sections have an ugly greenish tint, while others have oversaturated colours that are overblown leaving a blurry, smeared mess. At least it's anamorphically encoded, but it's crammed on a single-layer DVD-5 with a low 4-5 bit rate. This severe step backwards for Mei Ah is all the more ironic because of the HD pamphlet they've started to include with all their new releases that tout the benefits of their High-Definition remastering technology. None of which is on display here. I don't mind that none of their films go through any kind of expensive digital restoration, all I want is a good transfer of a clean print, but surely Mei Ah could have done a better job than this. While I wouldn't call the results unwatchable, you have been warned.

The English subtitles do their job, but as with most comedies, a lot is lost in translation.