I've only watched these two movies 半斤百两 and 关你茶室, and here are my thoughts. The primary difference between 半斤百两 and 关你茶室, is the effort, like quite literally 半斤百两 is just a lazy Cashgrab, no shade to Jack Lim, but like that movie was absolute dogshit. All i saw was just laziness in a nutshell, like they just made the movie just purely based of the fact in order to just release it in Chinese New Year. Dawg, it's like you handed a businessman a film camera and asking him to film a heist film, in which he's only seen one in his whole entire life. I kid you not, i'll bet all my angpao money that all the budget making 半斤百两 is just distributed to 曾志伟 and 欧阳俊华. 关你茶室, but at the very least they're trying to translate their cheapstake online content humour to the big screen, I can still reluctantly somewhat tolerate the total lackluster of everything from it. (Though it's still absolute dogshit as well) There's at least some redeeming and somewhat tolerable acting, and actually putting effort into the camerawork, at least the movie has some heart to it. Look i know, local movies are still trying to find and pave their way in the industry, but these two movies IMO, were somewhat of an insult to the art form itself. I'll give the nod for 关你茶室 reluctantly just purely based of their efforts into making this movie. I'll still want a damn refund for both movie's tickets
Many things to take into factor about this topic 1. CNY movies only target Malaysian Chinese. How many population is that? Less than 10m? 2. What’s the trend of people going to cinemas to watch movie nowadays? Since streaming started, I haven’t been 注意 new movies in cinemas since Avengers : End Game. 3. Inflation: out of the Rm 16 ticket (Sarawak GSC), how much does the filmmakers take in the end? When you say RM 5 million box office, how much goes to the filmmakers? RM 1 m? Is it feasible for the filmmakers? 4. Star factor: I have watched 关你茶室 and 半斤百两, 因为半斤有港星,茶室有低清。抱着relax的心情去欣赏,都很好看。其他的都没看了(现在的戏票也不便宜)