Wheels on Meals (1984)

Rating: C+

Dir: Sammo Hung
Star: Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao, Sammo Hung, Lola Forner

This is a fine if lightweight JC flick, in which he, Yuen and Hung (the last-named sporting a fabulous perm!) team up to help tart-with-a-heart Forner get her inheritance. Plot- and character-wise, there’s nothing new here, save the most blatant examples of Mitsubishi product placement in Jackie’s (already OTT) career. As ever, what salvages the film from the comic mugging are the beautiful action sequences which pepper it, culminating in another duel between JC and Bennie Urquidez, a valid candidate for his greatest ever one-on-one bout. It’s here that the widescreen version is really an improvement, even if watching the subtitles takes a bit of getting used to — the Barcelona setting means you have Spanish characters spouting obviously dubbed Cantonese. Lines like “Eyeball them closely!” don’t help either. Get beyond that though, and this passes the time easily enough.