The title sounds like a prediction from a fortune cookie, deliberately so. A comic melodrama set within the Chinese community in Toronto, it tries to marry frothy humour on the nature of fortune, romance and culture with bleaker subject-matter. It feels like a family film, except it can't be since it is so preoccupied with issues such as being laid off from work, the trials of single-motherhood, family break-ups and even suicide.

Most of the characters come off as pantomimesque sterotypes, although Sandra Oh as the overworked single mum, Kin, and Valerie Tian as the cute 12-year-old Mindy Ho bring some welcome naturalism to their roles.

Writer-director Mina Shum (Drive She Said, Double Happiness) interweaves the multiple plot strands neatly enough together around the central story of little Kin's wayward attempts to solve her family problems by experimenting with magic. But it's not enough to make up for the overall problem in tone.