Hail the Judge

HAIL THE JUDGE is a funny period comedy from Stephen Chow, filled with his usual diverse plot ingredients and scattershot surprises. Chow plays the usual low level character, a judge who falls foul of the corrupt rich in society and ends up penniless while true justice continues to elude the needy. After some ultra-bizarre adventures, he finally befriends the emperor himself and things take a turn for the better. It's an episodic, sometimes silly adventure filled with memorable characters (Elvis Tsui's kung fu master is a case in point) and hilarious situations, the animated speech scenes being particular highlights.

Bao Longxing went through a tortuous journey to become Bao Qingtian. If he had not been forced into a desperate situation, he would not have had such a bottoming out and rebound situation and determination. He mingled with the lower class, learned the art of swallowing swords and arguing with clients, and also encountered the current emperor in a brothel. Justice is not easy to assert, even if he is the protagonist and ultimately overthrows corrupt officials, he has put all his life lessons, luck, and courage into it. Although Xingye's comedy may seem nonsensical, it is still worth pondering. The most memorable scene is when he fights with the people in the brothel, defeating each other ten times, and finally goes to the beach.

Stephen Chow plays the son of a judge who's family has been famous for its judgements. Too bad his first case gets him shunned from his villiage for taking a bribe. This leads him on a quest to clear his family's name and to become a great judge.

This movie goes hand in hand with "Lawyer, Lawyer" in which he plays a lawyer (surprise!). If you like this, you might also like "Justice, My Foot!"

I felt sorry enough that this film is not popular at all even in Hong Kong. However, for all die hard Chow's fan, this will be a masterpiece that shud not b left out. This is "Mo Lei Tou" (a comedy style that based on unrealistic and ridiculous plot pioneered by Chow) at its peak. The plot is totally absolutely ultimately 1000 times more ridiculous than any film that u can imagine. The dialog is awesome. No single part of the film cool down for u to stop laughing.

The plot look simple but crazy enuf for u to start laughing. It begin with Chow starring a junior magistrate (a corrupted one of course)caught into jail when helping an innocent married woman he love at first sight to clear her from a murder charge that plot by evil minister whose son was actually the real convict. Chow escape from jail and run away as a refugee. He intend to go to the capital to see the Emperor and report the conviction. On his way, he manage to pick up 2 lovely women, one from circus, another one a prostitute while in the mean time mastering supreme skill to quarrel and bad mouth from the thin Mama-san (who happen to be his future in law). Finally, he able to force the Emperor to re-open the case by black mail the Emperor whom he meet him in the brothel. The Emperor made him a highest level judge to judge the case tgt with the evil minister. He manage to setup some brilliant but hilarious plots to force the convict to commit the crime, execute him while thrown the evil minister to jail.

The plots are really hilarious and ridiculously brilliant. Also not to forget the tremendous dialog that include some brilliant bad mouth quarrel between Chow and the Mama-san, quarrel between the fat Mama-san and thin Mama-san to inspire Chow to learn the quarrel skill later and also quarrel between Chow and the evil eunuch Lee near the ending. Beside that, some of the scenes are brilliant too.

One thing that need to mention is that to really understand the film and catch up 100 % of all the elements correctly, this will be a must to master Cantonese really well. Which may be the reason why early age Chow movie receive moderate response only from Asian world. However, when Chow film began to spread his influence around the globe, hardcore fans like me found that his film is no more that funny like the old time.

If you are a Chinese, I am sure you have seen the film, and enjoy it a lot.

If you are not, maybe you have seen one or two Zhou Xingchi(Stephen Chow)'s film such as: Shaolin Soccer, if you like that kind of humor, I am sure that you will like this film much more. Please remember Singsing's films is always the most funny movies in China.