Kung Fu Hustle Review
Personally, it was the most hilarious Asian movie I've ever watched. Stephen Chow was definitely regarded as one of major actors in Chinese film industry to my generation, and it was his second movie I've watched by choice. It is quite different from the previous genre of Chinese movie, which is more of an epic story than comedy.
The main theme of this movie can be described as one word: PARODY. Many of the famous scenes of the movie are spoofs other movies, from not only American TV program and modern Hollywood films, from but also famous Chinese films. For example, opening scene of Gangs of New York, running with invisible legs is from Looney Tunes of Warner Brothers, the battle scene between Xing and gang members are from that of Agent Smith and Neo of The Matrix, Nose bleeding from The Shining and Jackie Chan of Drunken Masters, so on, so forth. He even added his previous movie, Shaolin Soccer as well.
However, it doesn't stop right there the point where you laugh. Thanks to CG, it seems that he has tried to remove the clear boundary between a movie and an animation film. Various scenes with the power of computer graphic, the audience felt as if they're watching animated version of action movie, and clearly, Chow has overcome the stereotype of Chinese action movie; either endless revenge with hard-to-bear loyalty for lifetime, or sad deaths of all main characters. In the field of Chinese film industry, Chow has been precisely broading the horizon of Chinese action movies with various plots and parody scenes and dynamic performance, which is truly ground breaking for the fans of Chinese action movies.
When i first hear the title 'Kung Fu Hustle', i expected the similar action scenes in the films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden dragon and Hero. The characters are the same, there's always bad guys and good guys fighting each other, but the settings are very different. There's no traditional clothes, serious assassins who could fly, walk on the water, and always serious. This parody, and comedy genre of Kung Fu gives auditions something fresh and new experience! But i didnt really like this movie haha.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, Jihae. Kung Fu Hustle was not the kind of movie, I was expecting at all. I did hear lots of comments about how funny it was but definitely not what I expected. Overall, I enjoyed watching the movie.
ReplyDeleteJiye, I respect that you can appreciate this film for what it is. Obviously it was not intended to be a typical Kung Fu film. Its parodic portrayal is exactly the reason why I enjoed this film so much.
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