Chow delivers high kicks and same old shtick.
Releasing the Hong Kong hit before seeing its own market becomes overfilled with a sea of DVD imports, the folks at Sony Pictures Classics are reintroducing North American audiences to the subgenre of the martial art comedy. Loaded with a CGI-flavoring and cartoonish theatrics, Kung Fu Hustle is a hybrid between the golden-age psychical comedies of the Chaplin/Keaton and the nouveau mode of the kung-fu entertainment.
Casting some of the old faces from the time of Bruce Lee’s cinematic exploits, Chow pits an array of appealing cartooned characters – funky villains duke it out with some unlikely elder saints and a couple of buffoons, which includes the versatile Stephen Chow himself, are added for good measure. Each with their unique Pokemon-like special power features – much of the duels take place in a beautifully designed Sesame Street sized-back lot.
This playful shtick much in the same vein as his obnoxious Shaolin Soccer, sees Chow in a digital effects extravaganza that gets more tiresome by the minute. While the stunt work is on par with most films of the genre, the actual fight sequences pale in comparison to the choreographed work witnessed in last year’s Tarantino and Yimou films. What is desperately lacking here in writer-director-performer Chow’s over-the-top and very busy live-action production is some sort of viable storyline. With the miscued lollipop subplot, this one-note comedy is far too silly to bring in any authentic laughs, and as an action film it fails to dose the energy level – the final climatic confrontation contains no payoffs.
Instead of the nonchalance that was witnessed by Miramax a little less than a year ago, the good news for Chow and his Ku Fu Hustle is this subtitled East Asia flick will receive the support that is needed to register with a larger audience share. A must for fans that just can’t get enough of the martial arts genre, this should provide enough fun for boys between the ages of 8 to 12, but for the House of Flying Daggers literate, this stew will taste like same old chicken broth.
