Midweek DVD - Kung Fu Hustle
Filed under: Midweek Movie — Malcolm Owen @ 5:47 pm
Kung Fu Hustle is, oddly enough, a Kung Fu film with a vaguely typical Kung Fu storyline. The story of a street bum and a weird slum strangely full of martial art experts in hiding. Add in the local criminal underworld, and you have something that we’ve seen before.
However, it’s a Stephen Chow film…
Imagine, if you will, your average Kung Fu film. All of the fighting, the graceful flight of bodies in the air prior to impact, the intense battles requiring skill and years of dedication to get right. Got that in mind? Yes? Good.
Now, imagine the average cartoon short. A Bugs Bunny cartoon. Maybe Tom and Jerry. Something that has weird things that you don’t expect to really ever happen, for example a hammer falling onto a foot, and the foot suddenly turning into a large flat pancake. Thinking about that now?
Now, put both of them together. The kick-ass of Kung Fu, with the comic abilities and unrealism of a cartoon. You should end up with something like Kung Fu Hustle.
For example, you have the cartoon chase scene a la Road Runner. You have the Slum Queen’s husband that suffers a great fall from a building, landing face first, seconds later having a plant pot landing squarely on the back of his skull, and staying there. You have the throwing-knife attempts on the Slum Queen that backfires enormously. You have faces going through floors. Special effects that you can only call over the top, even for this type of film.
Add in some weird scripting and dubbing that is either very funny or a quote from somewhere else in popular culture (such as one of the slum resident’s death scene where he quotes Spiderman…), and you have a film that can hold my attention for a prolonged period of time.
So, Kung Fu Hustle. A film that doesn’t take itself seriously, yet still entertains.
“Kung Fu Hustle (Axe-Kickin’ Edition)” (Sony Pictures)
