Kung Fu Hustle - Austin American-Statesman

'Kung Fu Hustle' kills with sharp jabs of slapstick

By CHRIS GARCIA
Austin American-Statesman

Kick, slam, punch, powee.

Now, everyone, let's dance.

That's how the slick, snarling bad guys do it in Stephen Chow's wackily entertaining "Kung Fu Hustle," a boisterous mash of movie genres that fires off delights like a haywire popcorn popper. Toting axes and attitude, the aptly named Axe Gang commits its ultraviolent dirty work in the streets of 1940s China, straightens its collective tie, then gets down to a suave, swinging dance number out of a grand old MGM musical. Snap those fingers.

Sony Pictures Classics

'Kung Fu Hustle'

4 out of 5 stars

The verdict: Bounding with goofy originality and clever execution, you wonder why all movies aren't like this."

Director: Stephen Chow
Starring: Stephen Chow, Wah Yuen, Qiu Yuen, Kwok Kuen Chan, Siu Lung Leung
Run time: 95 minutes
Release date: April 22, 2005
Rating: R for sequences of strong stylized action and violence.
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What is this? Call it what you like. It's a consummate magical movie moment — surreal, funny, bliss-inducing. You almost want to dance.

"Kung Fu Hustle" is such a refreshing release, bounding with goofy originality and clever execution, you wonder why all movies aren't like this. Chow, whose international cult darling "Shaolin Soccer" exudes almost as much laser-footed fancy, enfolds his new film with outlandish martial arts action, cartoony slapstick, computer animation, neatly etched characters and a groovy soundtrack for a hipster homage that flatters both sides of the generational divide. (Though its hair-blowing exuberance could abrade stiffer viewers.)

With its '40s-style gangsters in spruce suits and slicked hair, obvious backlot sets and shrewd allusions to Hollywood — from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" — the movie takes ample cues from the past. Chow, a nimble comedian who also co-stars as Sing, a scrawny wannabe gangster, enlists a string of comedy traditions to sustain the film's rubber-burning velocity.

Sing and his corpulent sidekick are a Chinese Laurel and Hardy, feckless underdogs with greased heels. A foot chase has characters doing the Speedy Gonzales sprint, feet spinning like blender blades. When Sing's lips are bit by a snake, they inflate like circus balloons. And there's oodles of quaint flower-pot-on-the-head farce, which Chow employs with gusto.

It's all very funny, and even the persistent violence serves the dizzying comedy. The Axe Gang wields its namesake with impunity and the trio of kung fu masters who spring out of retirement to combat the thugs' ax-grinding can make a body fly as well as cry. The violence is the hyperbolic engine for a traditional story about young men and old men who tap their potential to eradicate a public scourge. Sweet redemption all around.

"Kung Fu Hustle" not only plays beautifully, it looks gorgeous. (Cinematographer Poon Hang Sang shot seminal Hong Kong action classics "Peking Opera Blues" and "A Chinese Ghost Story.") The movie is glazed in shiny Hollywood artifice and sunset colors, recalling the French fantasy "Amelie," down to the whimsical splashes of baroque special effects.

It also brings to mind the effects-driven magical realism of early Sam Raimi ("The Evil Dead" trilogy) and, clearly, Looney Tunes. A solid punch can leave a car dent in someone's head; a robust kick can atomize walls to dust and splinters. Famed action designer Yuen Wo Ping ("The Matrix," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon") makes his brawlers defy gravity to preposterous heights. Even the clouds aren't out of bounds.

The hallmark of the postmodern martial arts movie, from Tsui Hark's Hong Kong classics to "Kill Bill," is willed outrageousness, eye-bulging insurgencies against visual boundaries that aim to inebriate the senses, while honoring a lasting cinematic heritage. Trafficking in the Hong Kong comedy genre dubbed "nonsense," which Chow helped create, "Kung Fu Hustle" enlarges the form with its virtuoso buffoonery.

The drawback of such sugar-rush entertainment, no matter how masterly, is its potential to cloy, then chafe. But Chow's film retains our goodwill with sheer brazenness. There's a lot of action, flinging and flailing. Yet, just when it begins to numb, a guy turns into a giant toad, and all is well again.