[movie] "Kung Fu Hustle" (2004)

Apr 29, 2007 02:25

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I really, really dislike old Warner Brother and Loony Toons cartoons, and contemporaries. Always have. And I generally like my violence straight up, virtuosic, and with all the angst it can possibly bear (yeah, "Hero" (2002) aka "Ying xiong" worked for me, nationalist propaganda and all). I'm not any sort of fan of slapstick. So it really didn't seem likely, on the face of it, that "Kung Fu Hustle" would be my cup of tea. But something about it intrigued me, and finally, tonight I got to see it over at snarkyman and cosmicgarden's place with tn3270

I thought it was simply delightful. It was just like old cartoons, ONLY FUNNY.

Now, the other thing that makes this odd, which I didn't know going in to this, is that the movie is built entirely of in-jokes and allusions to other movies. I didn't twig to that until about a third of the way in, one character says to another, gravely, "With great power comes great responsibility". Or so the subtitles said. And I went, Wait, did they just mean to do what they just did? Oh yes, it becomes clear, it's quoting other movies left and right. I'm sure I'm not recognizing most of them.

But it didn't matter; the jokes were plenty funny the second time around. I'm sure the whole thing is screamingly hysterical if you know all the flicks being mocked.

The comedic timing was FABULOUS. I often find that movies with physical comedy seem to be too slow to me, like they're mugging the joke (if not the face) for the camera, as if to say, "See? We're being funny! Laugh now!" The flow was different in this movie; the actors (director?) trusted the physical humor to be funny and let it flow without chopping it up. So it was funny.

It seemed to me the whole thing had a gonzo artistic coherence which just made it all work. The use of music, the fabulous wire-work, the over-the-top CGI, the sets, the costumes, the completely sincere ironyless commitment of the goofy story all just played off one another.

The result is popcorn for the brain -- the sort of really good popcorn they sell at the Somerville (to which I was recently introduced). This is a piece of fluff of the first order. I wouldn't want a steady diet of it, but it was a fun way to spend a couple hours.

movies, review

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