Technically this film is a romantic comedy, inspired by a well known (though likely invented) story from the life of Táng Yín (1470-1524), also known as Tang Bohu or Tong Pak Foo. According to Wikipedia, the real Tong Pak Foo "was a Chinese painter, calligrapher, and poet of the Ming dynasty period whose life story has become a part of popular lore".
At the beginning of the film, Tong Pak Foo starts out unhappily married to 8 wives. In the end, after going to extraordinary lengths to pursue a slave girl, I guess he ends up with 9 wives.
Even in a Hong Kong movie, Tong Pak Foo might have been, like Kung Fu Panda, the son of a restaurant owner. But the film plays it safe and goes the traditional route of making him one in a line of Kung Fu artists.
Tong Pak Foo has inherited one dangerous enemy from each parent. The Evil Scholar killed Tong Pak Foo's father and wouldn't mind finishing his job by killing Tong Pak Foo himself, if and when a convenient opportunity happens to present itself. And there is a spurned lover who is probably still jealous and extends her hate of Tong Pak Foo's mother to Tong Pak Foo himself.
So much for the basis of the overall plot. But it doesn't really matter because the plot's only purpose here is to provide a sense of overall direction to a series of jokes and funny episodes. Everything is subservient to the humor. At any time there is a chance that in the next second something completely unexpected happens, possibly moving the film in a new direction, possibly being forgotten a second later.
The film has the familiar Hong Kong feel of British humor transferred into a Chinese context, which I love in Jackie Chan films. Only here it's a bit cruder and I think slightly more Chinese. More in the direction of Carry On or Benny Hill, though fortunately not far enough to make this a bad film.
The English subtitles aren't optimal. I imagine they are surprisingly good at capturing the original Cantonese jokes; but the English is often wrong and says the precise opposite of what it should say. This can be a bit distracting.
In my opinion this is a very good film (8 stars). If the crude jokes were replaced by slightly more sophisticated ones and there were stronger sense of overall coherence -- tying up the loose ends in a convincing way without damaging the overall flow of the film -- I would easily call it excellent or even perfect. But as it is, I can also understand those who rate it 7 stars or less for being a bit too low-brow.
