The most fun movie you’ll ever watch
They say you never forget your first kiss or what you were doing when you first heard about a global news story that defined your early adulthood. But I also reckon you will always remember where you first saw Kung Fu Hustle.
Writer and director Stephen Chow was already a legend of the Hong Kong and Chinese film industries in 2004.
His 2001 smash hit Shaolin Soccer had knocked over critics and punters in Europe and North America, even from outside the usual film festival crowd.
Shaolin Soccer saw Chow perfect a style of bringing cartoonish action to life; as unlikely and outlandish as a Road Runner cartoon. But Chow and his crew of martial artists and stunt performers somehow get it all onto film with live action, astonishing wire-work and as little CGI as possible. There’s CGI enhancement all over the film, but if you see a human being perform a stunt in a Chow film then, somehow, it was done.
After Shaolin Soccer had made Chow an internationally bankable name, he was ready to make the film he had been dreaming of.
Kung Fu Hustle would be set in 1940s Shanghai. It would have elements of the gangster movies Chow loved, but it would add mythology and folklore, setting them against modern-day hoodlums with tommy guns. The result was a complete riot that slayed audiences in 2004 and which hasn’t really been beaten in the decades since.
Kung Fu Hustle starts out over-the-top – and then it just keeps on climbing. In Pig Sty Alley, the ferocious Axe Gang have laid waste to all others and now rule with fear. Meanwhile, the people of the slum are preyed upon by The Landlady, who owns all the dwellings. If anyone wants to seek a fairer deal, they will have to go through the gang and The Landlady.
Luckily, there might just be a young fulla who has the skills needed, if only he can reconcile with his past and ‘‘reset his qi flow’’ to release the kung fu within him.
Kung Fu Hustle is the most fun you might ever have watching a movie. It is bonkers. It is non-stop. It is endlessly inventive and ceaselessly funny.
But don’t take my word for it. Pretty much every reviewer worth taking seriously raved about Kung Fu Hustle. The film broke into the Western box-office like the demented kid brother of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou’s Hero. The always quotable Roger Ebert said it was ‘‘like Jackie Chan and Buster Keaton meeting Quentin Tarantino and Bugs Bunny’’, which sounds about right.
Tarantino and Taika are both fans – and James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad) calls it ‘‘the greatest film ever made’’.
Kung Fu Hustle is many things and all of them are fun. It is a lean and hilarious parody of the gangster genre.
It is one of the greatest martial arts films ever made, even while it is poking fun at every martial arts film that has gone before.
It was a massive financial success for the Hong Kong and the Chinese film industries – still separate in 2004 – that opened Western distribution channels to Chinese films that have never closed. And it is maybe the greatest argument for decriminalising recreational cannabis use that has ever been put on film.
All of that, and Kung Fu
Hustle is on Netflix right now, you lucky, lucky things.