Master of slap Stick Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle

If Dragon Ball Z, Looney Tunes, and Freakazoid, were all thrown into a blender to make a live action movie, the result would be Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle. It’s silly and funny and absurd, but beyond the absurdity that might question Chow’s state of mind, there’s a brilliant modern tribute to slapstick comedy.

And if this movie isn’t quite as hilarious as Chow’s Shaolin Soccer, it nevertheless achieves, with its clear picture of social inequality in the mid-20^th century China, a piquancy the other film lacks. Kung Fu Hustle dramatizes social inequality; it portrays in ways that invite laughter the differences between the poor and the rich.

Kung Fu Hustle also suggests how Western technology has influenced China, leading it away from traditional teachings and in a modern direction. Kung Fu Hustle also confronts the modern problem concerning the relationship between China and Hong Kong. But, of course, it’s all done with comedy.

At the beginning of the movie, a rival to the Axe Gang speaks Mandarin; other characters speak Cantonese. The difficulties of communication as well as the tension that leads to massive violence match corresponding problems existing between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Hong Kong. Later, when Donut, a master martial artist, dies, his final words cannot be understood: He’s also speaking Mandarin while everyone else in the scene speaks Cantonese. Like mainland China, the characters are unwilling to learn or even accept Cantonese. Donut, however, is expected to speak Mandarin. And like Hong Kong, if he’s going to be understood, he must know both languages.

Kung Fu Hustle takes place in the early to mid-forties in Shanghai. The film follows the misadventures of two wannabe gangsters, Sing and Sum. They’re dimwit, lowlife burglars with dreams of becoming famous and infamous. Their failed attempts to impress the Axe Gang bring nothing but chaos and pain to the impoverished town of Pig Sty, where a vicious landlady and her obtuse husband maintain rule with their iron fists.

Because of the Sing and Sum mischief, the Axe Gang suddenly appears in Pig Sty and starts to make trouble. Three residents of Pig Sty who are also martial arts masters stand up to the Axe Gang but in the end they die in the effort. Kung Fu Hustle then becomes a series of action-packed, sensational, slapstick fighting that parodies Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and other Kung Fu movies as well as The Matrix. The fights are so extraordinary and so enhanced by special effects that they make no pretense to realism but instead approach cartoonish absurdity. The final fight, a very entertaining sequence, has it all, from “Spiderman” references to allusions to cartoons to men falling from the sky.

Underneath all the chaos, madness, and absurdity lies an emotional David and Goliath story. The classes struggle, clash. Western ideals translated and imported are inadequate and even absurd, but the cruelty and economic hardships of a dictatorial society are unacceptable and pernicious.

Kung Fu Hustle’s humanism and sympathy for the lowly underdog, its comic book-like characters and its visually frenetic action all come together to form an unconventional and enticing story of camaraderie, hope and triump