King of Comedy (1999)

[Drunk Monk]

I thought I saw this before, but it seemed totally unfamiliar. I'm reminded of Jerry Garcia's answer on how he kept it fresh for so long "Major memory lapses help."

This is an early Stephen Chow, not to be confused with the DeNiro film. It stars his usual comedic accomplices Man Tat Ng and Raymond Tin Kai Man, plus the ever horse-faced Karen Mok, and a charmingly young Cecilia Cheung, and an amusing cameo by Jackie Chan. It's great Chow moleitau humor, spoofing John Woo and Bruce Lee, along with the film industry overall, with sharp plot turns, irreverent and bawdy jokes, probably a lot of puns lost in translation, a hilariously suspenseful snot joke, a SWORDFIGHT, and of course, surprising poignancy. It's the kind of film that only Chow can deliver, so absurd that it works. Chow is a crappy extra trying to break into movies but he keeps blowing it. So he takes jobs teaching small-time crooks to act more intimidating when collecting protection money and prostitutes to act more coy and girlish in a club where they dress up in school girl sailor suits. It's great. I got a few genuine laugh-out-loud moments, which were sorely needed this weekend in the wake of the passing of our cat.

[cranefly]

I loved this movie. Some of Stephen Chow's earliest stuff was so bathroom humor it was painful to watch. But by this stage in his career he'd flushed enough of that from his system to allow his true zaniness to shine through. Several sequences are burned into my reptilian brain -- the early Jackie Chan bit, the snot sequence that got me laughing so, and then a bit with a naked little boy that was just so off the wall and politically incorrect that I just shook my head and chuckled in amazement.

I so miss "this" Stephen Chow. Just like I miss the early Woody Allen.

[Drunk Monk]

Yea, I totally agree, although I still like both Chow's and Allen's recent works.

Did you see the nekkid boy NG? Chow helping the nekkid boy crap in a gutter? That's gotta be the best NG ever outside of failed Jackie Chan stunts.

BTW, I saw this on Netflix. Both Netflix and Hulu+ have started to follow El Rey in mining vintage Hong Kong film. Unfortunately, unlike El Rey, N&H gets non-letterboxed edited and dubbed versions. This one was dubbed and Chow's voice was horrible.

Netflix also just picked up God of Cookery, another of Chow's golden period and in many ways the precursor to Shaolin Soccer. I'll probably rewatch that soon as I have very fond memories of it - his depiction of the Shaolin bronze men smoking, playing cards and kicking his ass repeatedly reminded me a lot of when I first went to Shaolin.