Having just returned from the world premiere of the Stephen Chow film Kung Fu Hustle courtesy of Toronto’s International Film Festival, I thought I’d offer a spoiler-free impression of the film.
The film was visually awesome. Lots of great imagery, good special effects, and impressive martial arts throughout. Chow seems to have taken a bit of quite a number of movies and woven them into something quite interesting. The Film Festival take keeps mentioning the Shaw Brothers, but this is way before my time and I can’t really comment. What I can say is that I recognized homages to the Matrix, Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs in particular), Untouchables-esque gangster films, possibly Shaolin Soccer, every classic Western and kung fu movie, and even old-fashioned slapstick cartoons (as well as a Jim Carey Mask-esque flair here and there).
The acting was pretty good. Over the top, but I’ll get back to that in a minute. Despite this being a Chow film and starring Chow, the real star of this film would be Yuen Qiu, in my honest opinion. She and actress Huang Shengyi showed up for the premiere, and Yuen Qiu was introduced as the eldest sister of Jackie Chan, which is interesting. Anyway, she totally rocked as the landlady in this film, and basically stole the picture.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to me was a lurking feeling that this whole movie could easily have been a stage production. There are about three main locales within the set, and the over-the-top acting actually works because it creates that musical/stage feeling rather than simply smothering you with cheese. I would almost like to see it done on stage someday, although I suppose the special effects might be difficult to recreate
Anyway, from my tired perspective, I’d give it two thumbs up. This is a film I laughed all the way through, and despite some Tarantino-esque graphic scenes which shocked at first, was entirely comedic. I’ll be adding it to my film library when it’s out on DVD, and wouldn’t mind seeing it again in movie theatres, assuming it’s released in North America.