Love is a Many Stupid Thing is a reasonable parody of HK smash Infernal Affairs that is marred by the inclusion of some truly stupid material that makes the mistake of deviating from an otherwise successful spoof formula.
Music, locations, and even actors are ripped right out of IA, while entire scenes are reproduced shot-for-shot with only the smallest of changes — usually just enough to make them look ridiculous (yeah, subtlety in a Wong Jing film — who’da thunk it?). It’s all actually pretty funny, until a rather nasty misogynist streak manifests itself about half-an-hour in and RUINS EVERYTHING. This is apart from the usual objectification business that goes on, and it gets pretty unpleasant at times, so although it’s not a constant feature of the film, it appears frequently enough to wreck everything else anyway.
A number of the non-IA gags are rather culturally specific and therefore no good to an ignoramus such as myself, while most of the rest are just plain unfunny. There’s also a completely worthless romantic subplot that really drags at times (although I suppose it could be argued that IA had one of those too), so it’s a shame that this and the other non-IA material is included at the expense of further gay-rapist interrogation scenes or Anthony Wong take-offs. On a more positive note though, Love is… does sort-of feature some of the finest double-fisted gunplay to come out of HK since John Woo split for Hollywood, so maybe it deserves a bit more respect than I’ve given it.
Maybe.