A desperate retread into Stephen Chow territory is what we get with The Lion Roars. This is the kind of comedy that Chow was once famed for, but over-saturation of the genre in the late-90s meant that the genre effectively killed itself. An attempt to resurrect the genre in a new decade doesn't always bring dividends when the material is just as weak as it was before.

Set in Sung China, Cecilia Cheung plays Lady Lau, a beautiful but tenacious gal whose wish is to find a faithful husband. She meets poet Chan (Louis Koo) one fateful day (and I mean fateful) and finds that she enjoys his company as well as his bad attempts at music and poetry. Seeing how they are a match made in heaven, the emperor orders them to immediately marry each other, and this is where the main story begins.

Chan realises that he had married not a sweet obedient woman but an easily bad-tempered tyrant who rules his life. In an age when a husband is effectively a king in his own castle, Chan finds that it is his wife who is the ruling regent. However, his wife isn't unreasonable: all she wants is that he love her only and to be totally faithful. Ironic if you consider that in those days, men often had several wives and concubines. But the actual message of a man being faithful to his wife is primarily aimed at the modern man, especially Hong Kong men. It is also letting women know that they should stand up to men, and leave them if they're unfaithful.

This is what Lady Lau does when she discovers that her husband had betrayed her by sleeping with a princess. Although to be fair, he had been seduced by the princess and it wasn't really his fault. Yet she argues that "you can't force a cow to drink water if it doesn't want to" (Chinese proverb), stating that if her husband had more resolve, he wouldn't have been so easily seduced. The last part of the film sees how a regrettable Chan tries to win back his wife by doing all sorts of stupid, yet heartrendering things.

The whole film is really silly in the first place, and the relationship between Chan and Lau often remains too aloof for the audience to believe there is any true love. Most of the comedy are topical affairs including a spoof of a modern concert. This sort of "mo lei tau" (nonsense) comedy might have worked back in the mid-90s, but today's audience requires a more sophisticated artillery of comedic situations, which this film lacks.

Louis Koo strengthens his comedic ability but really unable to better the likes of Stephen Chow, Nick Cheung or even Tony Leung CW. Cecilia Cheung is beautiful and alluring, but her comedy acting needs more work, although she can definitely cry. Full marks goes to the supporting cast including Wyman Wong and Hui Shiu Hung who are literally more funny than the leads actors and shows that it doesn't take over-the-top acting to work the gags.

The Lion Roars is a good attempt at trying to revive a dead genre, but ultimately it needs much better material and better actors.