I had never heard of this title prior to seeing the announcement of its release. It just looked like such an odd title for a martial arts flick, when compared to what I am used to from Shaw Brothers films. Perhaps that is my lack of in-depth familiarity with their catalog, but it does not lesson my interest in seeing whatever I can — that, and the fact that Dragon Dynasty has been doing a bang-up job on there releases thus far. Now that I have had the pleasure of watching, I wish I had been introduced sooner! My Young Auntie is a mash up of many genres of film and styles of kung fu with an end result being a movie that is very entertaining.
The story follows two distinct threads, and is not all that hard to follow; this is not a movie you watch for deep story. It starts with the introduction of Yuen Dai Nan (Kara Hui). The story is set up in a flashback where the dying elder of the Yuen family fears that his evil brother will lay claim to his estate, so in order to fend off that possibility, he marries the considerably younger Dai Nan, who had been taken in by the family some years earlier. This would ensure that the estate would fall to her; she was given further instructions to pass the deed to his estate over to another relative, Yuen Ching-Chuen (played by director Lau Kar-Leung). This is the bookending story, with Dai Nan taking the deeds to Yuen Ching-Chuen, while the evil brother plots to steal them back for himself.
The middle section of My Young Auntie deals with the culture clash as Dai Nan crosses paths with Charlie Ah-Tso, Ching-Chuen's Westernized son. Charlie and his group of friends set out to embarrass his Auntie, and this leads to fights between the two, as well as elaborate set-ups as she finds herself in a vastly different world than the one she had grown up in. Take, for example, a shopping trip to Canton. This finds Dai Nan seeking to fit in by getting dolled up in an evening gown and high heels. She is clearly not comfortable in the getup, and it eventually leads to a big fight. This fills the middle hour of the film, as the goofy Charlie takes Dai Nan around, including to a costume party which features him as Robin Hood and her as Marie Antoinette (or some equivalent). The movie closes with an elongated fight sequence as evil uncle and his bodyguards come face to face with Ching-Chuen, his brothers, son, and Dai Nan.
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