After watching Miramax completely bungle the U.S. marketing of his last movie, Shaolin Soccer, Stephen Chow is undoubtedly looking forward to happier results when Sony Pictures Classics unleashes Kung Fu Hustle this week. Sony's track record with Asian imports is outstanding, having accomplished the unthinkable by getting notoriously subtitle-shy American consumers to gobble up foreign fare like House of Flying Daggers and, of course, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
There's every indication that Sony will be trading on that pedigree in enticing domestic audiences to check out Chow's new film, but there's really no need. Kung Fu Hustle stands on its own feet just fine, thank you very much. And even if it didn't, there are probably better ways to promote a movie that, in most respects, might be considered the anti-Crouching Tiger.
Even though they share a lot of the same cultural baggage, Kung Fu Hustle is worlds apart from the highly poeticized elegance of the Crouching Tiger school. Silly, sloppy, sometimes gleefully crude, Kung Fu Hustle is, first and foremost, about having fun. Chow's movie is a hoot, pure and simple, a goofy throwback to the glory days of Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio, sort of like Kill Bill minus all the blood and attitude. Think of it as an old-school martial arts action-comedy melding classic Jackie Chan with the concentrated surrealism of a Roadrunner cartoon.
The Jackie Chan comparison is especially apt, since Chow, like Chan, is a veritable one-man movie industry, a charismatic and athletically gifted writer-director-star who's been able to produce movies that are both critically acclaimed and commercially successful. Kung Fu Hustle is considerably wilder than anything the aging Chan has pulled off in years, though. It might not even be stretching the point to suggest that, at least to a generation too young to have experienced Jackie in his prime, Stephen Chow is the new Jackie Chan. There are certainly worse things to be.
Kung Fu Hustle sends up the whole martial arts genre even as it proves as immensely satisfying as the very thing it spoofs – a kick-ass kung-fu flick. The plot, which constantly winks at its own silliness, revolves around a colorfully seedy neighborhood called Pig Sty Alley, whose residents attempt to fend off various super-assassins sent out by a gang of thugs they've managed to offend. The movie's big joke is that the seemingly ordinary, over-the-hill Pig Sty inhabitants turn out to be the greatest kung fu masters of them all. There's not much more to it than that, but it's enough – more than enough, actually. Kung Fu Hustle essentially becomes a series of increasingly outrageous battles, mostly played as hyper-exaggerated physical comedy, and with each "ultimate" encounter one-upping the one that's come before.
Chow stars as Sing, a lovable scoundrel who's desperately trying to ingratiate himself with the movie's bad guys, the dreaded Axe Gang, even though it's clear from the outset that the dope has a heart of pure gold. Through a series of deliberately hackneyed flashbacks, we learn that Sing's childhood ambitions of becoming a noble hero ended in humiliation, prompting the boy's vow to grow up to be the baddest badass on the block. Sing lacks even the basic genetic building materials for badassness, though, and winds up stumbling around the movie with his tubby sidekick (Lam Tze Chung), unwittingly presenting themselves as the most inept, would-be villains this side of Yosemite Sam and Marvin the Martian.
There's another parallel between Chow and Chan, and that's the affinity both harbor for Hollywood's great silent movie clowns. Chan had Buster Keaton, but Chow prefers Chaplin, whose Little Tramp seems to be the model for Kung Fu Hustle's Sing. Cementing the Chaplinesque connection is the movie's romantic angle – a pretty mute gamine whose love eventually redeems Sing and transforms him into the virtuous champion we always knew he could be. By the end of Kung Fu Hustle, in fact, Chow's character turns out to be not merely good, but perfect – a white-clad, invincible Zen-avenger navigating space and time like Keanu's Neo while throwing down major kung-fu moves choreographed by The Matrix's Yuen Wo Ping.
Little of this would be possible without a generous assist from technology, and Kung Fu Hustle uses computer-generated special effects liberally to create its live-action cartoon universe. Bodies are stretched to impossible proportions, limbs twisted like pretzels and faces flattened like pancakes, while characters zip along as if Tex Avery or Chuck Jones were animating them. The soundtrack adds to the goofy chaos, cheerfully and almost randomly careening from traditional Chinese tunes to western classical to Nino Rota carnival music to flamenco.
If you're looking for subtlety or anything remotely dignified, Kung Fu Hustle is not for you. The movie's humor is an unapologetically broad mix of slapstick and low-brow wackiness: exposed butt cracks and bugged-out eyeballs are the order of the day, and politically incorrect stereotypes run rampant (an effeminate gay character is particularly trying of our patience). Still, there's a lot of pleasure to be had here, at least for anyone willing to suspend disbelief and get in touch with their inner Three Stooges fan, and the numerous, key sequences featuring out-of-shape middle-aged fashion victims strutting their stuff like kung fu geniuses are absolutely classic.
Martial arts purists and Hong Kong movie connoisseurs may be tempted to quibble over the amount of computer-generated action in Kung Fu Hustle – after all, Jackie Chan still does all of his own stunts – but that's missing the point. Kung Fu Hustle makes extensive use of CGI not because Stephen Chow isn't physically up to the task, but simply because it looks so damn cool. After all, how better to create that outsized comic book sensibility, complete with gravity-defying supermen, deadly human-toad thingies and a cameo by Lord Buddha himself? Sure, it's ridiculous, but it's also ridiculously enjoyable. And for those seeking guilty pleasures of the most outrageous sort – but maybe too shy to deal with something like, say, Sin City – this might be just the ticket.
lance.goldenbreg@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Apr 20-26, 2005.