Benny's Movie Review: Kung Fu Hustle

I've decided that I might drop in an occasional movie review. But I won't be writing about movies that everyone reviews and that you've already decided to see or to not see anyway. So don't come back looking for my thoughts on Hitch or Revenge of the Sith. By the time I finally see those, you will have long since formed an opinion for yourself.

But I do end up going to an inordinate number of movies that no one has heard of, much less knows that they're actually showing in a Baton Rouge theater. Most of these pay at the Seigen Lane theater, and often, there's no more than a person or two in the movies other than my group.

So, has anyone else not heard of Kung Fu Hustle? I had never heard of it before Mrs. theskinnyonbenny picked it as a rainy holiday pastime yesterday. She billed it as "a kung-fu movie spoof."

Being unfamiliar with any movies in that particular sub-genre, I was intrigued. I like a good kung-fu movie. What I got was a kung-fu movie crossed with a Bugs Bunny cartoon. And I mean that in the best sort of way.

The basic story is of a Chinese city a long time ago (1930s? 1940s? Who can say?), where a couple of doofuses draw the big gang in town into a fight with a particular slum, and it turns out that the people in the slum have a little fight in them. At the very beginning, we get to see the Chinese gangsters do a choreographeddance in the style of the golden age Hollywood musicals, and it's immediately clear that this isn't a dark, vengeful, Tarantino style movie.

The gags are rediculous, but many of them are genuinely funny. For example, one of the guys who fights for the slum fights with half of his ass hanging out of his britches. There's also some BennyHillesque fast-motion running around, and an inept bad guy who keeps getting himself hurt. Good times.

And then there are some above average fights.

It's worth sticking this one in your Netflix queue.