A viewer will be justified if believing that this work flirts with a surfeit of genres, including Coming Of Age, Musical, Romantic, Comedy, Drama, et alia, with the screenplay and direction each lacking that sense of urgency necessary for a film to settle within a single classification, a result here being that, despite earnest efforts by some cast members, the plot line wants for proper design. The story opens with Chu (Chu Kin-Wah), an enormously wealthy young man, explaining to a journalist that he is offering 200,000 Hong Kong dollars for the return of a long circulated 1000 dollar note signed by his close friend Ricky, the scene followed by anticipated flashbacks that depict how Chu came into his fortune, along with events in the lives of him and Ricky (Nicky Wu), as well as the mutual object of their affection, Ching (Athena Chu), all while the trio is confronted with prospects of various forms of vocational failure. While Chu and Ricky demonstrate woefully undistinguished academic skills at their academy, they develop an acquaintanceship with Ching while they gambol about at the seashore, and she immediately fills the bill as love interest for the two, but unfortunately for them she is strictly career oriented (as a fashion model), the plot then switching primarily to the growing friendship between the young men who come form widely disparate socio-economic backgrounds. Wu sings the title song (approximately translated as "Not a Day Goes By When I Don't Think of You") with some grace, perhaps the high point of a largely lifeless scenario beset by trite writing along with listless direction and erratic editing, although a good deal of creative camera-work is to be found within a film that did well at the box office during its brief two week theatrical stint. An Ocean Shores DVD release is in widescreen format, providing Mandarin and Cantonese sound tracks with English and Chinese subtitles and is of fine technical quality throughout.
