Newcomers Jaycee Fong and Fiona Sit play Fu and Nam. Fu's father is a blue collar bus driver (Eric Tsang). Nam's father is a upper crust lawyer (Anthony Wong). Fu goes to a public school. Nam goes to an expensive private school. Fu goofs off, plays soccer with his friends, and his parents keep only loose reigns on him. Nam has piano and foreign language lessons, see's her parents less than their servants, but is strictly monitored and scheduled nonetheless. Fu eats street vendor fishballs. Nam's never had fishballs. You get the idea.

The pattern is a familiar one. Its long been a staple of love stories, the poor guy-rich girl, the rich guy-poor girl scenario, be it Holiday or Pretty in Pink. Cinematically, I guess the biggest age for these kind of romances was the Depression era when audience liked to see the dance hall girl catch the eye of the young, heir apparent businessman or the socialite fall in love with the mechanic/busboy/what have you. Transplanted into modern day Hong Kong, the setup is no different. Those with a penchant for sugar coated commercial romance should be sufficiently entertained.

In 2 Young the working class are painted in a better light. Nam is jealous of Fu's freedom and his poor but happy go-lucky, goofy parents. After a brief quiz of where they go to school, where they live and what their father's do for a living, Nam's dad is instantly dismissive of Fu and his friends. After Nam becomes pregnant and she and Fu decide to try and raise the baby, they are forced to run away, Nam's unsupportive parents decide to go to the tabloids, reporting Fu as a kidnapper and rapist of their underage daughter. The thid-act resolution isn't really surprising, of course everyone comes to their senses and realizes true love is all that matters.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That may be true, but that doesn't mean it cannot fall, roll down a hill, end up at the feet of an escaped mental patient who places the apple in his bathrobe and then proceeds to walk 50 miles to a gas station where he believes he'll meet a giant ant that will give him treasure. This was my first glimpse of Jackie Chan's son Jaycee Fong. It is clear he wont be trying to follow in his fathers footsteps, which is probably a godsend. Following in the footsteps of someone like Jackie Chan would be near impossible to duplicate, and Jaycee Fong, raised around the trappings of movies and stardom, obviously wants to give it a go, but wisely knows he doesn't have the look or background for it. His acting, sometimes, has a sort of Owen/Luke Wilson style, half-committed, like he just got up from a nap and they turned on the cameras.

Saccharine and predictable, 2 Young benefits from a solid commercial film director, Derek Yee (Viva Erotica, One Nite in Mongkok) and a very good cast. I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that Yee decided to delve into some lighter fare after the gritty crime drama of One Nite In Mongkok, and boy is 2 Young breezy. Jaycee Fong and Fiona Sit's roles are extremely standard- Jaycee the average nice guy, not overbearing or suave, but not exactly nerdy or shy either, Fiona is your basic cute bubbly girl, and she is well, cute and bubbly, but paints a sufficient frown on her face when needed. You wont get two better character actors than Eric Tsang and Anthony Wong and while each phones in their strengths (Tsang goofy comedy and Wong stern intimidation), the script allows each a moment to show a different side, like Tsang's paternal fears of his son following the same underachieving path he took.

The DVD: Tai Seng.

Picture: Anamorphic Widescreen. The best way to describe this transfer is that it is hit and miss. While it is technically free of any glaring artifact transfers issues, overall compression and print quality makes the image a tad muddled. Scenes vary in terms of softness and color quality, so those elements end up being just average. Likewise, the contrast is a bit grayed and lacking in decent shadow details.

Sound: Cantoese 5.1 or Mandarin 2.0. Optional English or Chinese subtitles. Well, its not the kind of film where you are going to get much of a sound workout. Centered dialogue. Rear and side channels marginally fill up with the weepy score and minor atmospherics but not to any impressive degree, pretty standard. The subtitles are not entirely perfect and contain a few instances of distracting grammatical errors.

Extras: I can sum up the tone of the extras with one phrase- Gee, gosh o' golly wasn't this all fun?

Photo Gallery.--- ‟Making of‟ Featurette (23:15). Good featurette but not too insightful, gives a general glimpse of the filming and the actors giving lip service praise to the production.--- Deleted Scenes (11:06). A nice collection of marginal but interesting scenes, including a few that provide some chuckles.---Outakes (8:48). No subs on this one, which is a shame because it would go a long way to the comedy if you knew just what they were saying during the screw-ups.Obviously Eric Tsang is prominantly featured.--- Audio Commentary by actor Jaycee Fong and Mark Yeung?/Young?, who identifies himself as the president of The Jaycee Fong Fan Club. Honestly, I only gave it a quickie listen. Seemed to be pretty decent, anecdotal, with Fong, in a very humble manner, talking about the experience of working on the film.

Conclusion: I personally find these kind of romance films to be utterly mundane. Stepping outside my prejudice for chick flicks, I can see how those that like this sort of thing would be entertained and possibly even charmed by it. So, this is a case where I'm actually going to recommeed a film I didnt really enjoy. The transfer has middling image and sound quality but decent extras. Lightweight fare, good for those that like it.