Athena in Fight Back to Scho… Errr, no, in To Miss With Love
And the first to do so is the ever opportunistic Wong Jing. Quick to capitalize on a success, Wong produced a copy immediately after the release of Fight Back to School 2. If Stephen Chow didn't answer present to the call of the producer, Wong managed to get most of the casting of the original and replaced the star by his number one copycat, Dicky Cheung. Wong gave the director's hat to Taiwanese Chu Yen Ping. A sure choice as Chu 's style is very similar to Wong's one, relying on big cast, fast rhythm and crazy ideas. The end result is always highly uneven. No surprise, To Miss With Love is a pointless comedy, only saved by the professionalism of some of its cast members (especially Ng Man Tat). The audience saw it and didn't rush into cinemas to watch it. For Athena, it has been a pure duplication of her previous work, a way to strengthen her presence in the business and in audience's minds. Still, this first experience with Chu Yen Ping was the start of a regular working collaboration which would bear fruits later on.
Athena discovers the script (but is there any?) of Vampire Family Athena still continued to act the flower pot in a similar production, partly supervised by Chu Yen Ping , called Vampire Family. This time, the actress was the target of Jimmy Lin's attention. Of course, she wouldn't resist to the, then, very popular teen idol. Another under-challenging part but given the very low level quality of the whole production (no script, a messy direction), there was nothing better to expect.
In good company
Things get a bit better with Project S and Taxi Hunter. If Athena's part remained very secondary (as the girlfriend of talented martial artist Fan Siu Wong in the former and as Ng Man Tat's daughter in the latter), at least, she got to work in high budget productions which gave her more exposure and reinforced her positive image of a young, pretty modern girl. Project S even featured Chu for the first time wearing a swimsuit on the screen… Sexy!
That's what we call charming!
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