Fei Lung gwoh gong

This loving tribute to Bruce Lee from Sammo is very funny and features scenes that are great homages to the Little Dragon. Something that brings the film down is its naive attempt at a Jim Kelly parody/tribute that is in rather bad taste. An otherwise worthwhile entry.

I saw this film as part of a Hong Kong double bill at a local arthouse cinema and surprisingly it went down pretty well. It has an endearing quality that shines through the confusing, `make it up as we go along plot', bizarrely staged action sequences and unintentionally surreal comedy. In Kung Fu comedy star Sammo Hung's second directorial effort we see him go through a series of barely connected adventures as a fat Bruce Lee fanatic working at his uncle's Hong Kong restaurant. Seemingly meant to be some kind of parody / homage to Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon, it bares little or no relation to the aforementioned film, with the exception of a fight scene involving a western boxer, a black guy and er .. some other guy. Rather than using a black actor, the film makers decided to black up a Chinese actor for the part. It's hilarious to watch the actor approximating how he thinks a black man might act, as he minces around in some kind of attempted jive swagger! Sammo does quite a good job of imitating Bruce Lee's mannerisms and although this is primarily a comedy, some of the fight sequences are great. It is easy to forget that Sammo is quite an accomplished martial artist when he spends most of his screen time as a big fat bumbling idiot!

Overall, there's a great sense of fun running through the film that makes it difficult to dislike, even though it's terrible. If you enjoyed this, check out Sammo Hung in The magnificent Butcher or My Lucky Stars, which are just as ridiculous ridiculous but with more fighting!

I was given the chance to watch "Enter the Fat Dragon" (aka "Fei Lung gwoh gong") from 1978 here in 2019. And with it being a martial arts movie from Hong Kong, and starring Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, of course I sat down and watched it.

Odd, how I've managed to evade this movie up until now, because this was a glorious combination of spoof and homage to Bruce Lee and his unique style of movies and movie-making. And Sammo Kam-Bo Hung was superb in the role.

There is a wonderful combination of action, storytelling, drama and comedy throughout the course of "Enter the Fat Dragon", with emphasis on comedy and action, of course.

This is definitely an old school type of martial arts, and a very enjoyable one as well. So I am sure that the movie will be enjoyable to almost anyone who has an interest in martial arts movies.

"Enter the Fat Dragon" is a movie that is well worth sitting down and watch, especially given the wonderful sense of combination of spoof and homage that they put together here.

This movie is not a kung fu movie. This is a comedy about kung fu. And if, before making this film, Sammo Hung hadn't spent some time watching films by the great French comic filmmaker Jaques Tati (i.ie., e.g., esp. Jour de fête), he is certainly on the same wave length.

Personally, I think Tati's films are hilarious; but they're not to all tastes. Some have told me that they loathe his work. I've never figured out why, but I think it's because the character that Tati usually plays himself is so totally dead pan, so unaffected by the events around him (which he is usually causing) that many miss the more subtle comic bits happening around him.

At any rate, Tati's main shtick - or at least his best known - is to take a pretentiously upright petite bourgeoisie with 19th century sensibilities and drop him into 20th century France where he must confront a society that is largely defined by the gradual eroding of those sensibilities. He usually has serious difficulties with little things like record players or radios. He's a hazard in a car, but the world's no safer when he rides a bicycle. But through it all, he never loses his aplomb, which is derived from his inner recognition that the nineteenth century was more interesting than the 20th overall.

In a similar fashion, the character Sammo Hung himself plays is a country boy come to the big city of Hong Kong, utterly convinced that what makes the city interesting is that Bruce Lee made kung fu movies there. This gets him into trouble in small ways, since he takes in stride happenstance which would never be noticed in a small town but which are deemed inappropriate in a big city - such as the moment when he appears to be urinating in the street, A cop stops him, only to discover that Hung is actually just squeezing water out of his shirt, soaked during an accidental dip in the bay. What's interesting about this gag is why it is Hung doesn't understand what the cop's fuss is all about - in a country town, as long as no one's looking, if you gotta go you gotta go. In other words, Hung is not really urinating in the street - but he certainly would - and what's the problem officer? Of course Hung's obsession with Bruce Lee also gets him into big troubles as well. He beats a gang of thugs who have refused to pay his restaurant-owner uncle. Of course, in a Bruce Lee movie, the thugs would be considered trounced, and they would have learned their lesson. But in Hung's Hong Kong, reality unfortunately prevails, and the thugs return when he's not around, to trounce his uncle.

Of course, Hung finally triumphs in the end, just as Tati always did. Characters like this must always triumph (at least in comedy) because they are completely innocent, and as such, despite their comic missteps and misunderstandings, they really represent what is best in the humans we admire and wish to be. We don't really want to be Bruce Lee (who has to experience the loss of all of his friends before he gets a chance to beat the bad-guy), we, in our own innocence, really want a world where Lee's heroics are possible.

Unfortunately, that world only exists on film.

"Ah, but what if...?" - and in that question we find Sammo Hung at his comic best.

Phew, that starts with some nasty animal cruelty. Let's archive this under Time Context. In times when animals are still 'used', only packaged in a way that is less disturbing to the eyes, such filmic relics shouldn't matter anyway. Anything else is hypocrisy. Better the bizarre blackfacing in the last third, that doesn't hurt anyone. There was just no, I would now like to quote verbatim, [...] on the spot.

'Enter The Fat Dragon', a humorous Bruce Lee homage instead of Bruceploitation, which is slowly going out of fashion. However, 'The Way Of The Dragon' is more of a role model than the humorous borrowing of the name. Humour here primarily means slapstick, which is further enhanced by the German dubbing, the best in the world. Following the example of Italian action-comedy films, Peking Opera buddies Sammo Hung and Jackie Genre in particular founded their own enormously successful Eastern sub-genre. 'Drunken Master' and "Snake In The Eagle's Shadows" were classics in the same year. Hung's fighting skills are remarkable, particularly his kicking technique, especially considering his stature. Nevertheless, it has to be said that, compared to Chan, he develops less of his own style and tends to focus more on the entertaining predicate 'I'm fat and I can still do anything'. In this film, he mainly uses Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do technique in line with the premise. Always with a wink, of course. Sounds like I would be thoroughly impressed. Unfortunately, not really. 30% eye-glazing, 30% idle time, 40% sometimes unbearable bollocks.