Mambo Girl

An effervescent Grace Chang stars as a cheerful college girl who’d really rather mambo in this rollicking crowd-pleaser, which abandoned the Hong Kong musical’s then-typical tropes of tragic operas, doomed lovers, and courtly or rural settings in favor of a ferociously modern, upwardly bound world of urban youth and rock and roll. Wielding the high-wattage smile and voice that made her a musical superstar, Chang implores everyone to “dance, dance as crazy as I am”; even a potentially maudlin subplot, and its whiff of old-school poverty, doesn’t stand a chance. She’s gamefully accompanied by Peter Chen Ho, an omnipresent Cary Grant/Rock Hudson figure of the genre.