Tong Pak Foo dim Chau Heung

"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.

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.

This is a great film for us,maybe also for those who can speak Chinese and know about Chinese culture. Of all the comedies I've seen,this one could be the best. If any could claim better,it would only be chow's another film,which I can't provide with an English name. This dude,dje2000,obviously knew nothing about China,and his words should not be on the first page of this film. Everybody has to find it not helpful,this could be the real silly thing. I'm saying this because IMDb Rates and page links are seen almost every movie site.This comment could kill the new comers.

replace it! replace it! replace it! with any of the others.

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.

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.