kung fu hustle

i rewatched kung fu hustle recently and was reminded of how great it is. it doesn't try to be sentimental. it manages to make physical comedy smart, something that has been lacking in hollywood comedies. all the characters are to some degrees caricatures. it's intriguing that the two female characters have opposite traits that has to do with their voices: the landlady's superpower is the volume of her voice; the lollipop girl is mute. i'm no longer smart enough to pinpoint the significance of this juxtaposition, but i know it adds to the story. somehow. if i were still in college, i could totally whip out a 20-page analysis of this movie.

besides the immense subtext that you can draw from this movie, what allows me to enjoy it so much is the element of surprise. with most movies nowadays, i can see the joke before it happens. but kung fu hustle is so unpredictable. who would've thought sing would use the knives in his shoulders as side rear view mirrors until he actually used them as such? the movie managed to be all over the place (a dance sequence, a live-action road runner sequence, martial arts, physical comedy, play on words, sexuality but not sex) but never lost its center, which very much adheres to the idea of kung fu and chi.

i've watched stephen chow since i was a kid, when he hosted a hong kong children's program, "430 space shuttle" (along with tony leung, another favorite actor; stephen and tony were in a sketch of good guy vs. bad guy - tony played the good guy and stephen played the bad guy). stephen went through a phase of crass comedy which had turned me off from his work for a while. now with kung fu hustle, he's definitely redefined himself as a comic genius.