Miu (Miriam Yeung) works as a fishmonger at the Prosperity Market to pay off the debts of her father. She gives herself three years to settle her father's debts, leave the wet market and find a man worthy of her. At the market, however, she finds herself at loggerheads with Mr. Fish (Eason Chan) in the neighbouring stall. A fierce battle ensues but the two are forced to work together when a new supermarket threatens their business at the Prosperity Market. Will Miu find her Mr Right, or is he a figment of her imagination?

I have just the thing to prescribe if you are looking for a double-boiled porridge with recycled fish - you could watch Hooked On You.

Let's cut to the chase. Ah Miu (Miriam Yeung) is the very tired daughter of a philandering father (Stanley Fung). She works in a wet market, selling fish to pay off her father's gambling and whoring debts, along with the other colourful denizens of Prosperity Market. However, our heroine has more to her than just groupers and galoshes - she keeps a secret plan to find a man worthy of her and marry before the big 30.

Her suitor is Fishman (Eason Chan), the whoring brute with a golden heart. With the onslaught of the commercial, franchised supermarkets, everyone at Prosperity Market - from the butcher to the greengrocer - has to pool their resources in order to compete. Between the frenzied promotions and three odd hours a day that Miu sleeps, a romance starts to smell between the two fishmongers (pardon the pun) but Fishman has to first give up visits to the local bicycle (of whom Miu's dad has had a ride too) and Miu has to decide on choosing a dumb muscle for life.

This is apparently the fourth time Miriam and Eason have collaborated with each other in a film (the first being eight years ago in Rumble Ages) but Ah Miu's interest in Fishman is only as believable as Fishman's interest in her. I don't think the two are given sufficient reason to like each other. In fact, the first half hour seemed a bit rushed, in order to paint Prosperity Market as quickly as possible before we get down to the romance.

Still, the recurrent details are quirkily rich - a bowling ball painted like a watermelon, a live eel being chopped up by Miriam (gulp!), and the surgical masks worn during the SARS outbreak - these really lend a touch of realism to the story and timeline.

One way by which this film will definitely exceed your expectations is the fact that the requisite happy ending, so often the lowest common denominator for all Hong Kong feel-good romance-comedies in the past 20 years, is not quite guaranteed. See it to believe it. You might not need to be a fish to get hooked on this!