The last few weeks, and the next few for that matter, are crowded ones in Hong Kong’s cinemas. The first rush was the clutch of juicy Christmas action blockbusters that hit screens in time to take advantage of a lazy couple of weeks around a major holiday that landed on a weekend. That’s followed closely by, of course, awards season. But wedged in between is a January now equally crowded with assorted juicy offerings designed to take advantage of a similarly lazy week around the Lunar New Year. You could wander out and check out yet another all-star All’s Well End’s Well trifle, or you could find some other kind of trifle.

It was really only a matter of time before good old-fashioned magic—with the rabbits and the hats and all that—made an appearance in a Hong Kong film. Magic and all things fanciful have been staples of the local cinema for decades (news flash: no matter how good your kung fu is, you’re not going to fly), and after the relative success of The Prestige and The Illusionist it’s a no-brainer. Retro abracadabra-style magic also dovetails nicely with the industry’s trend towards period adventures that are firmly rooted in Chinese history. If ever there was a time for East-meets-West magical hijinks it would be now.

The Great Magician is what you get when you marry those two concepts. The latest by actor-director Derek Yee is something of a departure for him. Known best as an actor in films like Death Duel and Heroes Shed no Tears, and as a director for underrated crime dramas with considerable (if unsubtle) bite, like Protégé and One Nite in Mongkok, Yee is making his debut as the helmer of a fluffy, romantic amusement. Set in the early 1900s and involving a Japanese plot to conquer China as well as a misguided attempt to reassert Manchurian rule, The Great Magician steers well clear of politics or historical analysis. This is characteristic diversionary holiday filmmaking. It’s not perfect and it drags on far too long (something specific neither to Yee, historical drama nor to Hong Kong cinema these days) but it is amusing and has its share of bright spots. You could do much worse this turn of the Dragon year.

The short version of the overstuffed story is that warlord General Lei Daniu (Lau Ching-wan) and his right hand Liu Kunshan (Wu Gang) are making plans to reunite the country as the Japanese push in. Lei’s other task is earning the affection of his 7th “wife”, Liu Yin (Zhou Xun), who’s with Lei because Liu holds her father captive. Her father (Paul Chun) knows the whereabouts of the Seven Wonders Scroll, which holds the key to mind control, and he’s not talking. All the while travelling magician/insurgent Chang Hsien (Tony Leung) has just returned from Europe and is plotting a way to overthrow the warlords with the help of his trusty magic show troupe, little realizing the love of his life, Yin, is sleeping with the enemy as it were.

There are as many references as there are characters and plot points in The Great Magician, some of which work and some of which don’t. The film’s groundwork is finally fully laid almost an hour into it, and the action finally kicks up at the 90-minute mark. Suffice it to say there’s a goodly amount of wasted space and superfluous backstory that could have been excised quite nicely and left room for the film’s stronger elements. Lei’s six other wives, with the exception of Nan Yi’s Wife no.3, simper and giggle needlessly, and an early rivalry between Chang and Chen Kuo (Alex Fong) takes center stage for a stretch, only to be thoroughly abandoned. Talk about a red herring. Clearly The Prestige was only an influence on the surface.

Then there’s the issue of co-writer Yee’s and Chun Tin-nam’ and Lau Ho-leung seeming inability to decide on precisely what kind of film they were making. Based on the novel by Zhang Haifan there’s an odd alchemy at work that never, well, fully works. The love triangle aspect comes into play slowly and remains painfully understated, leaving one of Magician’s greatest assets, Zhou, with less to do than she should have had. It flirts with Cyrano de Bergerac-style romantic sleight of hand but never really develops into a full-blown rom-com. There’s political intrigue and conspiracy, but that angle is never made a key narrative driver. The retro vaudevillian comedy comes in fits and starts.

Obviously there are oodles of magic on display and for those who find magic tricks childish, condescending, contrived or flat out stupid, this is not the movie for you: the magic doesn’t serve the plot, it’s the other way around. Like the rest of the film, the magic sequences are well mounted and boast strong production values—polish is not something The Great Magician lacks—but Leung and Lau never get a chance to really bounce off each other, so much time and effort do they expend on playing Houdini and a curious adversary. And the parallel Yee hints at, between magic and cinema, entertainments based on trickery and audiences willing to be “fooled” by bigger and bigger cons is one ripe for the picking that never really gets fleshed out.

Nonetheless The Great Magician looks great, and when they’re allowed to, Leung and Lau do manage to wring a few sparkling moments from the material by sheer force of personality. Lau in particular manages a nimble performance that keeps viewers guessing as to Lei’s true level of ineptitude, sentimentality or sense of justice. Aside from Chun and Fong, there are a handful of cameos and small roles by familiar faces (Lam Suet, Daniel Wu, director Tsui Hark) that keep the periphery action from fading into simple background noise. There’s little doubt as to how it will all end (happily) and that’s what makes The Great Magician not quite magical enough to be the game changer it could have been.

The Great Magician opened in Hong Kong on Thursday.