Conservative kung fu instructor Wong Hsia-yuan (Lau Kar-leung, who also directed) is informed that the Wah Chiang Martial Arts Association must be torn down, in order to accommodate local road expansion. Hsia-yuan and his students (Gordon Lau Kar-fai, Hsiao Hou, Wong Yue, Chang Chan-peng, and Mai Te-lo) are prepared to defend their building until the end but a telegram arrives from their sifu in America, proclaiming that it is time for a new beginning. Relocated into new and more spacious accommodations, Hsia-yuan and the men await their teacher’s arrival, so that he may officially open the new school. To Hsia-yuan’s horror, the Chan that arrives is not their elderly leader but his young and very Westernized daughter, Chan Mei-ling (Kara Hui Ying-hung). Filling in for her sickly father, Mei-ling’s modern ideas of training and constant use of English drive Hsia-yuan halfway around the bend, particularly since he must continue to show her a suitable degree of respect. She also launches a campaign to bolster the school’s meager student body and ends up with a group of very odd but enthusiastic young people. Among these new recruits are some call girls and the self-defense training they learn at Wah Chiang does not go over well with their triad bosses (including Lung Tien-hsiang, Johnny Wang Lung-wei, and Sun Chien).

Lau Kar-leung’s follow-up to MY YOUNG AUNTIE (reviewed in issue #212a) relocates the action to the present day (well, 1983) and basically just inverts the premise. This time, it is Kara Hui as the young upstart making life miserable for the traditionalists but the results are not nearly as enjoyable and the film seems out-and-out misguided. By 1983, Shaw Brothers’ pictures were slipping badly at the box office and THE LADY IS THE BOSS plays like an attempt to court the audience that made Cinema City’s ACES GO PLACES films such monstrous hits. Unfortunately, the comedy is very heavy-handed and badly overplayed by just about the entire cast. The youth angle has dated badly (though Lau’s go at "Disco Kung Fu" is not nearly as painful as that seen in Joseph Kuo Nan-hong’s THE OLD MASTER) and much of the film is downright embarrassing. Thankfully, there are also some good points here and the film can be cautiously recommended to stalwart Lau fans. A sequence in which Kara Hui and some friends use BMX bikes to battle the hoods is dynamic and well-executed, and the film improves dramatically during the final third, thanks to prolonged battles in the gang’s bar and a gymnasium (in-joke references to THE 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN and MAD MONKEY KUNG FU do not hurt either). These scenes are superbly choreographed and thoroughly enjoyable, almost redeeming an otherwise faulty enterprise. In fact, the best bet for viewing is to simply skip the first hour and revel in what sifu Lau Kar-leung does better than just about anyone. Ku Feng and Elvis Tsui Kam-kong also appear.