holyabdul

The movie is about the early days of Wong Fei Hung, a real person in late-19th century/early 20th-century China whose deeds have been greatly embellished and made into dozens of films and TV series. He is the same character portrayed by Jet Li in the Once Upon a Time series.

However, the film itself has almost nothing to do with the real person. The main character uses the WFH name and his father conjures up familiar memories of a umbrella-wielding kung fu master popularized by the Iron Monkey film. Also, in the real-life tales of WFH's heroic deeds, it is said that he took on a dock gang in his early days, which this movie loosely portrays.

Other than that, this movie could have simply been a standalone film. But the WFH name is famous throughout China and no doubt was used to sell more tickets.

Although the use of CGI and wire is very noticeable at times, the overall look and choreography of the film is very good. Unfortunately, as is common with Chinese films, too much attention is paid to the look, but not enough to the substance.

Ultimately the movie does not break any new ground. As is common in Chinese action films, characters again do inexplicably idiotic things for the sake of creating "drama" or "emotion" and to create convenient scenarios to push the plot along without any serious attempt to explain WHY.

Overall, it's not a bad movie but it's also little more than another typical Chinese flick that looks good but doesn't do anything beyond that.

To be honest, I am not a big fan of Stephen Chow's earlier works. Not that they were bad, but they were not as good as the classics such as God of Cookery, King of Comedy, Shaolin Soccer, and of course, this film. I found the early films with Stephen talking in a cartoonish "comedic" voice annoying.

The ones where he has more creative control tend to have him speaking in a more natural, and more deadpan voice and those films tend to carry deeper messages than just a mindless comedy. Seriously, some scenes are moving.

Now back to this movie, there's really not much to criticize here. The acting, the dialogue, the typical Stephen Chow style of humor, all fantastic. There aren't many ROFL moments, but there are endless classic funny moments that the film will make you grin from ear to ear pretty much from start to finish. And I know that I personally still quote some lines from the movie in my everyday life... :)

The one knock I do have is Gong Li, whose talents seem wasted in the film. No doubt she looks great in the film, but she's not given much to do and seems rather wooden as if she did not enjoy herself in the movie. Knowing Gong's talent, it felt strange to see her character just be a "vase" love interest and nothing more.

I guess you don't want to have anyone upstage Stephen but in that case why not cast a starlet with a less impressive resume than Gong?

However, overall, this is a great film and I highly recommend it.