88 Films: The Inspector Wears Skirts II (1989) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of 88 Films

88 Films, that British based boutique releasing label that only recently began releasing their products in the United States, continues with their unveiling and distribution of Chinese or otherwise distinctly Asian film releases in lovingly detailed deluxe collector’s sets with posters and reversible sleeve art.  Having paired up with Fortune Star which has been handling many of the 2K digital restorations of Chinese cinema’s back catalog of Hong Kong action fighter movies with their recently released special limited edition of Wellson Chin and Jackie Chan’s 1988 female police squad trainee comedy The Inspector Wears Skirts, it was inevitable 88 Films would pick up and distribute the next installment in what became a four-film series by Wellson Chin with The Inspector Wears Skirts II.

 
Picking up where the first film left off with many of the same character arcs from the first carried over from the battle of the sexes, unfulfilled or misplaced romantic longings, fistfights and a final test of their training and resolve when pitted against an arch nemesis, The Inspector Wears Skirts II spices things up with the arrival of four new female recruits who are subjugated to trainee hazing almost immediately.  Overseen by Hong Kong Police Academy trainer Madam Wu (Sibelle Hu reprising her role), the new team includes Amy Yip from the Sex and Zen movies as a voluptuous screen starlet with a running gag involving her oversized boobs.  The sequel also amps up the sexism from the male squad in their ongoing feuding with the female squad including but not limited to Billy Lau being a peeping tom with the girls showering only to have an even greater humiliation visited upon himself.

 
Switching cinematographers this time around with Police Story director of photography Cheung Yiu-Cho, the film maintains the bright and cheery aesthete of the first film albeit with far less dangerous pyrotechnics while Noel Quinlan returns to the composer’s chair with his Casio keyboard.  The sequel also switches up the writers with Abe Kwong and Man Choi Lee taking over from Kam Fu Cheng respectively.  Decidedly more laid back with the jokes, the hazing, the running gags including but not limited to Regina Kent’s yearnings for love and getting the short end of the stick, The Inspector Wears Skirts II is less interested in the action-packed antics of the previous film and more of a screwball musical comedy though a birthday party sequence winds up playing out very similarly to the previous film’s infamous roller skating scene.

 
By now, if you weren’t on board with producer Jackie Chan and director Wellson Chin’s The Inspector Wears Skirts, you probably won’t ease into this much either.  Fans of their efforts, however, which still sport terrific martial arts sequences by Jackie Chan’s Stuntmen Association, will wanna dive right into the next carefree installment of this ongoing series of girl power Hong Kong action police comedies.  Yes the absence of Cynthia Rothrock in this next installment is missed but Amy Yip makes up for it with her recurring cleavage gags and the dynamics of the preexisting characters from the first film are decidedly more fleshed out here.  Not nearly as exciting or thrilling as the first but a good sequel which fans will be delighted to display on their Hong Kong action cinema shelves.

--Andrew Kotwicki