Tong Pak Foo dim Chau Heung

Stephen Chow is the greatest of the Four Scholars in Ming-era China. His paintings go for 30,000 taels a pop, his poetry sells like mad, he has eight wives who spend all their time playing mah-jong, and he is thoroughly miserable. Then he spots Gong Li and falls in love. She is a servant in the household of James Wong and Pei-Pei Cheng (who is very funny), so he sells himself to the household under a fake name. He quickly rises because of his scholarship, and is overjoyed when Gong Li confesses she loves his poetry and the man who wrote them. Unfortunately, she doesn't believe Chow is that man. Also, Madame Cheng hates him, sight unseen.

There are also various subplots involving Wai Lam as King Ning, and the big fight at the end is with Chia-Hui Liu, who killed Inigo Montoya's father. I mean Chow's father.

The only star to compare with Chow is Jacky Chan. However, while Chan performs his comedy stunts using practical effects and takes that often injure him, Chow's gags verge on cartoons. Chow also plays with Chinese mythology, and while I am unclear as to which legends this movie refers to, there's no need to understand the details if you have any familiarity with your typical Kung Fu movie. The details of the silly plot take up a lot of time, but there's still plenty of gags to make the audience laugh.

"Flirting Scholar" follows Stephen Chow's long tradition of inspired looniness, and made me giggle out loud in reaction to its pure enthusiasm to entertain. His riffs on Chinese tradition are funnier when you have some context, but much of his humor is so outrageous that you'll laugh regardless, as many jokes, especially the physical comedy, are universal. While this isn't quite my favorite Chow film, it's definitely worth watching, and still a must-have item in any Chow collection.

Like many Chow films, "Flirting Scholar" takes a typically over-the-top approach to its comedy, and incorporates such elements as extremely physical slapstick, parody, kung-fu, cartoonish surrealism, and wacky references to other HK movies. To truly appreciate Chow you need to watch lots of HK cinema -- and after you have watched several of Chow's films, you will begin to pick up on running gags that appear in successive movies.

While not as masterfully executed or as narratively tight as one of his truly brilliant films, such as "God of Cookery," this film is simply so utterly crazy at times that it will nonetheless make you laugh out loud, as all of his films inevitably do.

The previous review is quite unfair. This movie can only be understood and hence enjoyed by Cantonese (not even by other Chinese). I laughed all the way. You will, if you can enjoy this kind of lower intelligent jokes (same level as Jim Carrey's). It has so many local jokes that I missed some since I left Hong Kong for a long time. I can feel they're funnier if I stayed in HK long enough. The performance is great for Chow. It is not a good role for Gong Li. It is a comedy rather than the serious roles she is usually in. Unlike some stars such as Chow Yun Fat, she is only good at certain roles. The song at the end is great and I believe it was copied from another movie with a similar name, which is a serious version of this movie.

Tangbohu was a very famous artist in ming Dynasty of China, but in Chow's film, (I said Chow's, not only for his acting as the hero but also for his affection in the film, because he usually took the role of director as his) his image was greatly changed. but the changes were not done random. Chow cast his feeling of his early life in it. Chow is a clever actor, but when he was young, everybody, especially his boss thought he was just anybody else. he felt disappointed and lonely, because no one amid his talent. so in the film this feeling was expressed through the role. though it is a very good comedy which makes you laugh through out the film, you can still get some complex feeling of life. Chow showed his excellent acting talent in the film, and the other supporting roles were also very good, such as Peipei Cheng, James Wong etc. if you can speak Cantonese, you can get more interest from it, because it contained a lot of vivid and interesting oral language in Cantonese.

This is a must watch for all Stephen Chow fans and I highly recommend this for everyone that loves random comedy. The characters were compelling, the story was surprisingly not so predictable like thought from the beginning and the dialogues were well crafted. I really enjoyed this movie because it was very entertaining and there were so many new ways of making me laugh which was great.

The movie is about a noble scholar who is not pleased with his gambling wives, because they play majhong all day. Stephen Chow's character in this movie can paint, sing and write poems. Then later he and his scholar friends sees this girl whose beauty outshines all other girls near her and then the Scholars try to disguise themselves just to get near her in weird but funny ways. The girl comes from a rival family which hates his family. So he tries to find a way inside to approach her without being noticed. But there is much more than just romance and comedy, so I highly recommend this hilarious movie to everyone.

The movie wasn't as slow as I thought. Stephen Chow is just pure awesome in his genius way of making his audience laugh out loud.