Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity

Director Mina Shum re-teams with the lead actress behind her breakthrough debut film Double Happiness in this magic-realist romantic comedy. Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity stars Sandra Oh as Kin Ho, a lonely single mom living in Vancouver with her impish 12-year-old daughter, Mindy (Valerie Tian). Mindy stumbles across a corner magic store while traipsing through Chinatown one day, and begins to believe that spells and potions are the perfect means for improving her mother's life. Her purchases not achieving the desired results, Mindy resorts to more serious schemes, courtesy of a fortune teller. After a few botched efforts — which result in good fortune for a neighborhood butcher and terrible luck for a security guard — Mindy sets herself to the task of finding her mother a mate in the form of Alvin (Russell Yuen), a co-worker of Kin's who has long admired her from afar. Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity premiered at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival. — Michael Hastings

Review
Although its heartwarming subject matter and magic-realist trappings don't lend Mina Shum's third feature much of an edge, this breezy snapshot of community conflict and camaraderie exhibits a lightness of touch and an acute understanding of human foibles and aspirations. Especially in its somewhat forced climax, Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity isn't as assured as Double Happiness, the director's previous collaboration with actress Sandra Oh. But it's also broader in scope and more flat-out funny than its justly celebrated predecessor. Once again, Shum exhibits quiet technical mastery and a gift for framing shots as inventive as they are integral to her story. And once again, her work benefits immensely from Oh's warm screen presence, sarcastic edge, and superb comic timing. (God bless HBO's Arli$$ for giving Oh a steady enough paycheck to keep appearing in worthy indies like this.) Child actors are often the bane of the family film, but Valerie Tian's Mindy is as realistically sweet-and-sour a "tween" as any such character to grace the big screen in recent memory. The rest of the cast, too, brims with quiet craft, from Ric Young's atypically comic turn to the performance of Alannah Ong, another otherwise underutilized Shum veteran. Naysayers may claim that the immigrant culture-clash comedy has worn out its welcome, but Long Life suggests that it's become just another genre, capable of sinking — or, in this case, rising — to the level of the filmmakers' vision. — Brian J. Dillard