When Liang Po Po meets Ah Beng in new Chinese New Year movie, accidents happen

SINGAPORE – Local film-maker and actor Jack Neo’s fit of martial arts inspiration gave Malaysian actor Jack Lim two broken ribs.

Back in drag as his exuberant grandma persona Liang Po Po, Neo was filming Liang Po Po Vs Ah Beng in Malaysia in 2025. He was suspended on thin cables for the fight scene, as was his co-star Lim.

As a director, Neo, 65, was familiar with wire work. But it was his first time in a harness as a performer.

He brought up a knee so he could strike a cool pose while flying, “like the hero in Ong-Bak”, Neo tells The Straits Times in a Zoom video call on Jan 13. In the Thai martial arts film Ong-Bak (2003), the hero’s knee is a weapon.

That day, so was Neo’s. Despite a few incident-free rehearsals, something went amiss. The two collided, leaving Lim with an injury that took two months to heal.

Lim, 50, now laughs at the memory, but he carried on filming despite the shattered ribs. After all, he is not just one of the upcoming Chinese New Year comedy’s stars, but also the movie’s chief executive producer.

Opening in Singapore cinemas on Feb 17, Liang Po Po Vs Ah Beng is billed as the first movie pairing of two iconic cross-border comedy characters – Neo’s Liang Po Po and Lim’s Ah Beng. In the movie, the pair become unlikely allies after a child is kidnapped by an organ trafficking ring, leading the duo to battle their way towards a rescue.

Lim, speaking in the same Zoom interview, jokes that the silver lining is that Neo is now aware of the difficulties of suspension work. As a director, says Lim, Neo used to scold actors for looking clumsy while lifted.

Neo’s takeaway from the incident? “Next time, don’t ask me to do it.”

The feisty 80-plus-year-old Liang Po Po is an institution in Singapore and Malaysia. She has appeared on Mediacorp’s Channel 8 sketch show Comedy Nite since the 1990s.

The character’s popularity led to Liang Po Po: The Movie (1999), which became a hit, and also spawned more television appearances, most notably in the dialect-heavy Mediacorp variety series Happy Can Already! (2016 to 2018), aimed at older viewers less familiar with Mandarin.

When he was approached by Malaysian production companies aware of the nostalgic affection fans across the Causeway have for Liang Po Po, Neo agreed to take part in the project. People there are more familiar with the character than they are with the actor who plays her, he says.

“When people see me in Malaysia, they call me Liang Po Po, they don’t call me Jack Neo,” he says.

Donning the wig and floral blouse, carrying the handbag and getting back into character were not too difficult, says Neo, because between the 1999 movie and now, he played the character on television, he says.

Lim’s Ah Beng is also a Malaysian icon. The everyman character, who works as a security guard, has become a Chinese New Year entertainment staple, and has appeared on television and radio, as well as in three movies from 2010 to 2014.

Liang Po Po Vs Ah Beng satirises the Singapore-Malaysia rivalry over food, the cost of living and well-paying jobs. Case in point: The publicity event for the movie, held between Jan 11 and 13, took place aboard the Genting Dream Cruise ship, so everyone could feel they were on neutral ground that favoured neither side.

But one aspect of this big-screen sequel will differ. The Singapore version will be mostly in Mandarin, while the Malaysian version will contain more Cantonese.

Lim notes that there are some cultural differences in on-set behaviour between the two countries. For example, in Malaysia, it is customary for the leading actors or director to sponsor daily treats and gifts for the crew.

“There will be an announcement on set about the day’s sponsor. There was a star who brought an ice cream truck to the set. There might be bubble tea for everyone. Once, someone bought $60 vacuum flasks for each crew member. There were about 100 of them. Everyone looks forward to it,” says Lim.

Neo says the practice is inexpensive considering the joy it brings, and attempted to adopt it on his sets in Singapore.

“I tried it in the past, hoping that once I started doing it, other people would pick up the habit and begin sponsoring gifts too. Unfortunately, nobody copied me. I wanted to tell them to change their attitudes. Crew members are the first to arrive in the morning and the last to leave at night.”