Kung Fu Hustle - with many spoilers

Stephen Chow’s Comedic martial arts film was first released in 2004 before being remastered and re-released in 3D in 2014, marking its 10 year anniversary. The dubbed and subtitled versions of the film have almost entirely different scripts. This is a review of the subtitled original movie.

Verdict

My movie ratings consist of thumbs up or middle fingers as sometimes one starring something doesn’t shame it enough. 5 thumbs up = an absolute triumph. 5 middle fingers = a complete piece of shit, go fuck yourself.

Kung Fu Hustle - 2 Thumbs up

Mildly entertaining but unstructured, goofy, spoofy nonsense.

Favourite quote “Cops, come out and clean up the mess” - The axe gang flexing their muscles over the redundant police department.

“Go home and raise pigs” - Steven Chow’s character Sing fires his accomplice Bone

Favourite scene

The scene that sold this movie to British audiences when it was advertised prior to release in the UK is the one where Sing, trying to pick a fight on the weakest person in pig sty alley, accidentally starts on two bodybuilders and a giant. This was all I knew of the film before watching it.

The final scene was the most impressive for me. Sing, in his final form, flies into the air using an eagle as a platform to project himself to face God herself, in order to assault his rival with The Buddhist Palm. The special effects made this a very satisfying watch.

Best meme from the movie

Analysis

I didn’t love this movie. And I was expecting to, seeing as it was sold to me as “even better than Shaolin Soccer”, which I really enjoyed. For me, it ranks just above the scary movie franchise as a spoofy frolic. It seems that every iconic scene was a nod to or a direct spoof of various Big names in Chinese Cinema. It even references Spiderman which came out two years prior in 2002.

The spoofy nature of the movie was entirely lost on me until I looked into it further after finishing it. With hindsight, I can see exactly why this missed the mark. Watching Kung Fu Hustle is like chatting to a group of people you’ve just met, who keep on making in jokes. Watching these private jokes mocking areas of China (Pig sty alley is a play on words mocking the Hong Kong region of Kowloon), and nodding at, strangely enough, Bruce Lee winning the 1958 Hong Kong national cha cha championship (the landlord and landlady do the cha cha in their bedroom) feels like forcing a laugh for the sake of playing along with the movie.

The jokes themselves were lost in translation in the version I watched and I dread to think of what garbage came out of the characters' mouths in the dubbed version. For example, “The lion’s roar”, a scream the landlady defeats her opponents with is equivalent to saying “The hen’s peck” in English, bringing understandable comedy to the film, given the character’s overbearing personality and the dynamic within her relationship. This movie was obviously a richer experience in Chinese.

Despite my criticisms, the movie still had its moments. After watching the climax, the journey getting there made more sense. Rather than the fragmented, isolated sketch show it appeared to be, it emerged as a story of escalating revenge, and as one man’s struggle between good and evil. I couldn’t help but revel in the moral of the story; spending your entire life getting petty revenge and picking on people in glasses will one day lead you to become a Kung Fu Master.

The cartoon stylizing and special effects in this movie are what I enjoyed the most. It’s certainly one of a kind and definitely stands up to today’s standards.

The bottom line

Kung Fu Hustle hasn’t quite mastered The Buddhist Palm, nor has it been beaten up and pissed on. It’s just okay.