Kung Fu Hustle.
Do you ever watch movies and wish you could do the thing that the main characters could do? For me, the usual suspects are Strictly Ballroom (1992) for dancing and Shine (1996) for piano-playing. I finished this movie wishing I could fly horizontally through the air to kick someone in the head.
Something you might not know about me is: I love kung fu movies. I realise that this might be odd for some of you who know me, but then for others it’ll make perfect sense. The kick-ass action, the romances, the honour and the comedy all roll into a great genre that I’ve only recently been introduced to. I didn’t grow up on these things (that would be Pink Panther movies), but ever since I saw the original Drunken Master (1978), I’ve been hooked.
Kung Fu Hustle (2004) starts by introducing us to the ruthless Axe Gang who have a stranglehold on the city’s police force, and whose members are as nasty as Tim Roth in Hoodlum (1997) and as graceful as the Sharks and/or Jets. In the first five minutes, you are introduced to the kind of highly stylized movie you’re about to enjoy. The rest of the movie takes place in a slum called Pig Sty Alley that is so poor, the gangsters don’t even bother with it. The action picks up when two members of the Axe Gang encroach upon the ghetto and try to put the squeeze on its residents.
It turns out that the gang members are actually hapless muggers who are too stupid to know that a) you don’t pose as Axe Gang members and b) it’s fruitless to try to extort money from poor people. It also turns out that the slum seems to have a disproportionately high population of kung fu masters. This makes life difficult for the real Axe Gang members that are dragged into the fray by the stupid muggers.
I was laughing was so loud, my father came downstairs to see what was so funny. Kung Fu Hustle was so funny. It combines gangster movie with comedy, romance, fantasy, musical, drama, and some live-action animation. This movie has some of the most memorable characters I’ve seen in a long time. It’s more than any other modern wire-fu movie (even though it does use the same martial arts choreographer as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Yuen Wo-ping) – it’s a bending of a genre.
Rent this movie, enjoy it, and then buy a copy of it for me as a thank-you for making you see it. Honestly, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years.
Something you might not know about me is: I love kung fu movies. I realise that this might be odd for some of you who know me, but then for others it’ll make perfect sense. The kick-ass action, the romances, the honour and the comedy all roll into a great genre that I’ve only recently been introduced to. I didn’t grow up on these things (that would be Pink Panther movies), but ever since I saw the original Drunken Master (1978), I’ve been hooked.Kung Fu Hustle (2004) starts by introducing us to the ruthless Axe Gang who have a stranglehold on the city’s police force, and whose members are as nasty as Tim Roth in Hoodlum (1997) and as graceful as the Sharks and/or Jets. In the first five minutes, you are introduced to the kind of highly stylized movie you’re about to enjoy. The rest of the movie takes place in a slum called Pig Sty Alley that is so poor, the gangsters don’t even bother with it. The action picks up when two members of the Axe Gang encroach upon the ghetto and try to put the squeeze on its residents.
It turns out that the gang members are actually hapless muggers who are too stupid to know that a) you don’t pose as Axe Gang members and b) it’s fruitless to try to extort money from poor people. It also turns out that the slum seems to have a disproportionately high population of kung fu masters. This makes life difficult for the real Axe Gang members that are dragged into the fray by the stupid muggers.
I was laughing was so loud, my father came downstairs to see what was so funny. Kung Fu Hustle was so funny. It combines gangster movie with comedy, romance, fantasy, musical, drama, and some live-action animation. This movie has some of the most memorable characters I’ve seen in a long time. It’s more than any other modern wire-fu movie (even though it does use the same martial arts choreographer as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Yuen Wo-ping) – it’s a bending of a genre.
Rent this movie, enjoy it, and then buy a copy of it for me as a thank-you for making you see it. Honestly, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years.
posted by Catherine at 9:21 a.m.
4 Comments:
I love Stephen Chow so much that it is painful. I'm very glad you enjoyed this movie. I encourage you to watch all of the other ones now. Even his older ones of questionable quality that he didn't have a hand in writing or directing, and he was pretty much small time compared to what he is now - those movies are still made enjoyable just because he's in them.
And that has NOTHING to do to my gargantuan crush on him.
In fact, God of Cookery is the movie I have seen more than any other movie in my life. I've had to have seen it over a hundred times by now.
God of Cookery, you say? I will investigate!
God of Cookery is very much like a Kung Fu movie, but their kung fu is shown through advanced cooking technique. It has all of the essentials: a master falling from grace, learning the meaning of true heart in living and cooking, the defeat of an evil doer, and the Shaolin Monastery. Also, it has love story elements in it. It is beautiful in every way.
If it involves rice, beans and corn Catherine will be all over it.
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