Re: Great news for fans of Stephen Chow's CJ7!
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Originally Posted by Jeff McMillan
I think my (slight) issues with Kung Fu Hustle stems from my belief that it was a bit of a retread of Shaolin Soccer. KFH was technically a "better" film maybe, but I just enjoyed SS more, especially since it was my first exposure to Chow.
CJ7 to me felt like one of Chow's older (but still enjoyable) efforts, like God of Cookery, but done with younger viewers in mind. It still retains his very quirky comic sense.
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Hmmm... Actually, if I had to compare, I'd say KFH is more like a retread of God of Cookery, but maybe tweaked (or perhaps watered down a little?) to work better for audiences who are not deeply familiar w/ the Hong Kong scene in general.
Of course, one could say somewhat similar things about Shaolin Soccer too (though SS is definitely watered down a whole lot by comparison).
And really, much of Chow's body of work is just based on spoofing what has come before primarily in the (Hong Kong) cinema but applying such to various other popular premises/contexts (in HK) beyond what is normally done, eg. cooking (and popular religion/superstitions) in the God of Cookery, soccer in Shaolin Soccer, the stuff of (wuxia) heroes and "Godfather-like" ethos in Kung Fu Hustle, more popular religion/superstitions in A Chinese Odyssey, etc. Of course, in that sense, KFH is a bit lower on the totem pole compared to God of Cookery and Shaolin Soccer since it does not really transcend its cinematic origins in ways that the other 2 films do to a degree, eg. cooking (and superstitions) and soccer are rooted in things outside of the cinema whereas everything in KFH is pretty much rooted in cinematic origins.
OTOH, I think KFH does succeed far better than Shaolin Soccer in terms of actually spoofing what had come before even though it does not transcend the material in the way that SS does. In one sense, I guess KFH is probably just Chow's latest development (before CJ7) in trying to translate all that he wanted to do for the Hong Kong cinema into a form that works well for a more universal audience. First, there was SS, then there was KFH, and now, there is CJ7 as his latest attempt -- and that may partly explain why you feel CJ7 works more like some of Chow's older films that were made primarily for the Hong Kong audience during the peak of his Hong Kong cinema career.
_Man_
