Critics reviews

It features multiple mistaken identities, overlapping love triangles, plenty of spit-takes, a food fight, an accidental electrocution, a psychic octopus, and a character who gets a severe nosebleed every time he ogles a bustline. It's deliberately silly and soppy and so convoluted that a point-by-point synopsis would resemble a cat's cradle—and yet, somehow, it's also one of the squarest, stiffest things Johnnie To has directed since the 1990s.

...Things are up in the air yet again in the sequel, which also introduces two new characters into the mix to make things even more (delightfully) confusing. This one has a different feel from its predecessor, it's shot digitally (a first for To) and not as stunning to look at, it's not quite as tight, but it's more emotionally involving, and maybe a bit darker...

This may be why I get so much pleasure from this film formally but not particularly emotionally—though I of course would strongly assert that form can be emotional and that here it sometimes is—but the latter problem for me is actually more tied to the milieu To insists on working with for many of his rom-coms: the bratty rich of Hong Kong.

[The movie] jettisons nearly everything that was distinctive about the original and rehashes the broad, crowd-pleasing bits that were previously mere speed bumps. (Among other problems, one of the first film's three main characters, played by Daniel Wu, barely appears in this one. Two new characters take his place, but neither makes a worthy adversary for Louis Koo.)

Nothing makes a terrible amount of sense here, including why any of these women would believe that perpetually shame-faced Shen-Ran will ever learn to keep it in his pants. But taken on its own loopy terms, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2" can be a marvel, as To keeps his manic movers and shakers colliding and ricocheting in ever more elaborate permutations.

I liked how in his article on Romancing in Thin Air, Adam Cook compared Johnnie To to Howard Hawks in his ability to hang on to and expand his complex visual style while hopping between thrillers and romcoms. So his latest, Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, plays like Man's Favorite Sport? to the Bringing Up Baby of To's 2011 original, initially disappointing yet fascinatingly riddled with the filmmaker's concerns, less sequel or remake than perhaps self-re-examination.

Every once in a while, the film's effects team will make the footsteps of finance drones sound like the men marching into the triad battles in To's Election movies. Working with assistance from his constant enabler, Wai Ka-Fai, To even throws in a man brawl. But mostly the movie has a blissed-out, pro-corporate badness.

...The worst film To has made since founding his independent studio Milkyway... This setup throws the romantic entanglements out of whack, as Shen-ren flits between the women while Paul sticks with Yang Yang and Zixin mainly just looks alternately scared of and still intrigued by Shen-ren. It doesn't help that, aesthetically, this is the worst a To film has looked since the director paired up with DP Cheung Siu-keung, who is tellingly not the cinematographer here.