Do you like cartoons? Kung Fu Hustle, while starring flesh-and-blood actors, uses so much CG to enhance them that it is functionally a cartoon. Any doubts to this fact will be dispelled by a watching of the high-speed foot chase scene, which has got Warner Bros. Homage written on it in fourty-foot-tall flaming letters.
I DO like cartoons, very much. And I like this flick very, very much.
Kung Fu Hustle starts out as a fairly typcial 'tough gang rubbing out the competition and ruling the city' sort of gangster flick. Then, a petty thief impersonating one of their members gets the gang involved with the tenants of a slum, and things go all pear-shaped.
This is because half the residents of the Slum are retired Kung-Fu masters who have hidden their identities to live lives of peace. For reference: they don't get said peace.
And this isn't the elegant, graceful wire-fu from movies like Crouching Tiger or House of Flying Daggers. This is the comedically exaggerated, shattering concrete and bursting hands into flame martial arts of Kung Fu Cult Master or, say Dragonball Z. However, the writer/director KNOWS this is silly. This is, in fact, his intention. As a result the movie is hilariously funny all the way through.
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Funny story: I was on the subway and happened to overhear a conversation between two very sterotypical 'Jewish Mothers'. They were talking about their book club, and the nice resturant they'd just been at and other such pleasantries. After a few moments though, there conversation turned to the subject of movies. One of them was complaining to the other how today's Kung Fu movies with all their special effects and wirework had somehow still managed to lose the sense of wonder and myth that you used to get in your martial arts movies from the 70's.
I love people. People are awesome.