Kung Fu Hustle
with Stephen Chow, Wah Yuen, Qiu Yuen
Directed by Stephen Chow
(Columbia Tri-Star)
by Chad Van Wagner
Stephen Chow can’t be happy about America right now. His last film, Shaolin Soccer, was universally praised, and spectacularly fumbled by its American distributor, Miramax. The man was ripe to be a mega star in the West, kind of like a Jackie Chan meets Jim Carrey figure. Instead, Shaolin Soccer‘s follow-up, Kung Fu Hustle, gets a “limited” release before being ushered to video. Yee haw.
That Hustle isn’t quite the film that Soccer is is only of mild concern. It’s still one of the most screwed up, insane movies you’re going to see this year. This time around, Chow is a down-and-out con man who may or may not be “The One.” The plot is neither here nor there. What sells this film is the utterly berserk visual sense of slapstick. Think of The Mask as a karate movie, complete with faces that squash inwards and necks that twist like barber poles when hit. It’s essentially Looney Tunes taken to its most chop-sockey extreme, and it’s amazingly entertaining.
That said, this is a step down from Soccer, albeit a small one. The story wasn’t much in Soccer, but it’s practically an afterthought here, despite being sprawling and pointlessly complicated. Cartoon violence can get pretty brutal and still be funny, but watching a beautiful, innocent young woman get a shotgun blast in the back doesn’t do much for the comedy factor. Chow himself disappears for an oddly long time in the middle third of the film, and the love interest is, all hyperbole aside, the single flimsiest love interest in the history of cinema. Seriously, she only gets two brief scenes, including the “touching” reunion at the end. Good Lord, why bother?
Despite the shortcomings of his most recent work, Chow is still an impressive filmmaker, and it’s only because his talent is so impressive that the flaws mentioned above feel so problematic. Don’t let ’em stop you from seeing this, though. Kung Fu Hustle is brilliant.
(www.kungfuhustle.com)
