The English love to mock the Germans for having no sense of humour, but what about the Chinese? (My theory is that the Hong Kong Chinese are far too industrious and serious about money- making for the luxury of comedy. Life is about graft, not gags.) When a “comic martial arts” film comes out, it’s full of guys exchanging blows, falling over and flying through the air. Which is about as funny to watch as clowns throwing cream pies at each other.
Now for confession number two. After seeing Kung Fu Hustle — written and directed by Stephen Chow, who also stars — I take it all back. I was wrong. Here at last is the great, funny martial- arts comedy for people who hate martial-arts comedies. Set in 1940s China, this is the story of Sing (Chow), a petty thief and braggart with a big mouth who dreams of being a real bad guy. He arrives in a Shanghai slum known as Pig Sty Alley with his fat sidekick (Lam Chi Chung), and tries to blackmail the locals by pretending to be one of the notorious Axe Gang. It isn’t long before Sing is given a fist in his ear and told to beat it by the locals. Before he goes, he manages to ignite a battle between the ruthless Axe Gang and the inhabitants of Pig Sty Alley. Although Sing and his sidekick are clearly a pair of losers, for most of the film Chow avoids the easy option of making his lead character lovable.
I know that doesn’t sound like much, but forget the plot. This is about sensational fight sequences and gags. And you can forget all that rubbish about the ballet of martial-arts fighting, too. One of the appealing things about Kung Fu Hustle is that Chow isn’t after the kind of elegance and poetry we’ve seen in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. His influences are a bizarre mix of Bruce Lee and Bugs Bunny, and instead of zen solemnity, he opts for a silliness that manages to avoid being stupid. If Quentin Tarantino had a sense of humour, he could have made this film.
Most special effects leave me cold, but Chow manages to use them in a way that sweeps you up into the action. You would have thought that after Crouching Tiger and House of Flying Daggers, you had seen about every gravity- defying, mortality-denying, spin-leap-zoom-bam battle sequence imaginable. Yet here, the celebrated action choreographer Yuen Wo Ping has carried on from where he left off in Crouching Tiger to create something fresh and exciting.
At times, it isn’t just gravity that is defied, it’s film genres. Kung Fu Hustle moves from the supernatural to the surreal to something right out of Tex Avery cartoons. There’s one terrific scene when Sing is being chased down a road by the Landlady (Yuen Qiu) in a way that evokes Wile E Coyote and the Road Runner. In another, Sing’s lips inflate in a way that only those of cartoon characters do.
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Much of the comedy comes from seeing the ordinary people of the Sty suddenly reveal themselves as martial-arts masters. There’s the cold and shrewish Landlady, who always has curlers in and a fag dangling from her mouth, and is forever attacking her poor husband, the Landlord (Yuen Wah). Chow loves to play against expectations, so one of the maddest and baddest of all the martial artists turns out to be a little old man.
Having such unlikely figures as powerful martial-arts heroes isn’t just for comic effect. It goes right to the heart of the film’s central theme: the idea that appearances are deceptive, and that those ordinary-looking people may be extraordinary.
What surprised me most about Kung Fu Hustle is how funny it is. The gags seem quaint and old- fashioned, but they work nevertheless. The best set piece is a kind of Two Stooges screw-up gag involving Sing and his sidekick. First, a series of knives end up in our hero, then his blundering buddy accidentally empties a box full of snakes on his head. I know what you’re thinking — that’s funny? Yes, it is! But the best moment of the whole film is the fight involving the two old musicians who just sit there playing their harps. I won’t even attempt to describe the series of forces they summon up. Let’s just say this scene will be parodied and referred to in other films for years to come, so you might as well just go and see it now.
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Kung Fu Hustle, 15, 99 mins, Four stars