Mad Monk (1993)

[Drunk Monk]

In fact, I watched three Stephen Chow films on three successive nights.

I have joined this club.  It was a struggle but I can't be bested by cf when it comes to Chow nor Greg when it comes to Duomos.

The Mad Monk (1993), made just the year before Love on Delivery, which was perhaps even worse.

What's shocking about the latter is that it had Maggie Cheung in it, and Anthony Wong, and it was directed by the duo of Siu-Tung Ching (A Chinese Ghost Story, The East Is Red, etc.) and Johnnie To (Exiled, Election, Triad Election, etc.).  Just too much effin' talent, and it blew up in their face.

There are two or three flicks with Maggie Cheung in them on Netflix, as well as the many martial arts additions.  I need to check some of them out.

Agreed. What a mess of a film.  I kinda liked the Kaiju-esque finale, but I think I was trying to hard to like this.  It's clearly another Chow spin on the Monkey King.  Even though his role is not Monkey, it's in the same Monkey universe and his character is of that same ilk.  My guess is there were just too many voices making this.  Chow tries to do his Mo Lei Tau humor.  Ching goes for Fant-ASIA.  To leans towards stark violence.  Maggie was surprisingly good in a humiliating role.  Anthony, well, he just phoned it in, which is something I feel he does a lot.

If you watch Mad Monk, do a lot of speed first.  Everyone talks a mile a minute, and I could only get about half of the subtitles.  But if your Chinese is decent, that could supplement your understanding a bit, and you could probably cut the speed back a smidge.  But why bother?

I got about an hour in and passed out - into the movie, not the blow - still tweakin with my circadian rhythms obviously as I'm posting now at 3AM.  I suspect that it's one of those Cantonese pun-ridden comedies.  Cantonese, being tonal, has an extra dimension of punning, and I've been in theaters where the dialog gets fast and furious, as well as rather random, just like this, and the audience is roflmao. I remember watching movies with Sifu and him even chuckling like this. But the Cantonese speakers can't explain - puns just don't translate.  My understanding is that Chow is a master of this sort of pun humor and the puns are sustained with wicked double meanings for long complicated scenes.  

I somewhat stand behind my pun postulation. There are a few scenes where there is clearly something twistedly punny about the dialog.  Also, it relies heavily on an understanding of Journey to the West.  Chow is just obsessed with Monkey King. He's made 3 passes at Monkey King overtly and just committed to another.  Note that this attempt precedes his two Chinese Odysseys by two years, and those had a similar incoherence.  I thought I reviewed those here somewhere.  This was not the film that i thought it was and I think I was confusing those for this one.

Anyway, give this one a miss. It took both cf and DM to jump on this grenade and save you all (now watch, ED will like it).