Bru Ha Ha

I had a great movie experience the other day, one of those exhilarating, knock-the-winds-outta-ya moments you live for as a movie buff - and it hit me at a time when I least expected it.

I watched three movies in one day, starting with the lame Team America [con], a fart-and-puke fest vaguely disguising itself as a political satire. If indeed it can be considered a political movie, it's a political movie made by idiots who hate politics, and it wouldn't be as pointless and redundant if Parker/Stone had actually adhered to some sort of funny anarchism à la the most inspired moments of South Park, instead of lazily slugging out their nihilistic worldview left and right. Of course, that would be fine - or not so much of a quibble - if Team America was funny. Which, for the most part, it isn't. Making parody of action flicks like the ones made by überproducer Jerry Bruckheimer is not only pointless, it's been done to death - many times by Bruck's movies themselves (however accidentally).

Next up was the dreary literary adaptation A Love Song for Bobby Long [con], about a girl catching up with her family in the lower-class parts of New Orleans; a deceptively unassuming film which hides its pompousness as convincingly as the scenery-chewing Oscar hopeful John Travolta portraits a college professor. It's left to Scarlett Johansson to carry the film, and despite her efforts, it's a drag. Still, amazingly, there were a couple of scenes between Johansson and Travolta towards the end of the film that managed to squeeze some emotion out of me - out of fatigue or not, we will never know.

So, drained and desillusioned after two bad movies back-to-back, it was not with much enthusiasm I went into Kung Fu Hustle [PRO], the latest outing by Hong Kong stuntman-actor-writer-producer-director-madcap Stephen Chow. I enjoyed his previous Shaolin Soccer, a whacky soccer slash martial arts movie that despite some crappy CGI was very entertaining, thanks to a breakneck energy and visual style that, literally, took the ball and ran with it. In Kung Fu Hustle, the cross-culture element of Shaolin Soccer is gone in favour of a more traditional martial arts tale set in the 1950's, albeit with a fair share of quirkiness and odd characters. It's not so much a parody of the genre as it is a loving and exaggerated celebration of it - an insanely paced 90 minutes of unbelievable stunts, CGI-enhanced kung fu, retired shaolin masters, neighborhood uprisings, axe-wielding gangs, and young hoodlums trying to rise up the crime ladder. A familiarity with the genre is a major plus, admittedly, but as a pure action vehicle it beats the shit out of everything - East or West - from the last year or so.

Maybe my garde was down, maybe I was too tired to counterattack Chow's visual farce. But there's just nowhere to hide from this bad boy. Thinking about it now makes me nearly breathless, and I can't wait to see it again. This is what it's all about.