Kung Fu Hustle

Since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Chinese martial-arts films - the ones released in the West, anyway - have become history on a high-wire. Epic, earnest mythical things of swords, silk and skipping through the treetops.

But with Kung Fu Hustle comes light relief. This isn't so much House of Flying Daggers as Slum of Swinging Axes, meets Roadrunner, er, versus Kill Bill.

After making his mark on the kung-football in Shaolin Soccer, director-star Chow delivers an even more outlandish tale in Kung Fu Hustle.

This one comes complete and absurd with cartoon-inspired action, the occasional chorus-line number and the scariest landlady ever committed to celluloid. That's permanently curlered battleaxe Yuen Qiu, who presides over the 1940s Shanghai ghetto of Pig Sty Alley, where not many of the downtrodden residents are exactly what they seem.

Sing (Chow) and his rotund sidekick turn up in the ghetto pretending to be members of the feared Axe Gang, a mob of tomahawk-wielding brutes already dressed for their victims' funerals in top hats and black suits.

That starts an escalating battle between the gang and the neighbourhood, with Sing caught in between. Soon there are bodies flying everywhere, some landing with the same crater-blasting thump that was Wile E. Coyote's trademark and others sprinting across the countryside at cartoon pace.

Elsewhere, frequent attacks of metaphysical silliness also recall the wacky likes of A Chinese Ghost Story.

Just as its respect for the laws of physics is happily lacking, and allowing that there's no such thing as too many special effects or too dumb a gag, Kung Fu Hustle also seems mighty irreverent about kung-fu lore.

But many of the supporting cast are past stars of 70s Hong Kong martial arts films. Apart from Chow, the other star behind the camera here is Yuen Wo Ping, the famous fight choreographer who kicked The Matrix and Kill Bill into shape.

In many scenes here, Chow seems to have quite a bit of fun at the expense of those movies. And as Pig Sty Alley runs riot, that sense of mischief is laugh-out-loud infectious.

CAST: Stephen Chow
DIRECTOR: Stephen Chow
RATING: M (violence)
RUNNING TIME: 99 mins
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts, Rialto from Thursday