Advertised as "a new comedy unlike anything you have ever seen before." Uh-huh. Or perhaps ever wanted to. A hunk of martial-arts madcap in which a gang of axe murderers will form a celebratory chorus line after their mincing leader has felled a rival (felled him face-first by slicing off his leg in full stride with a thrown tomahawk), but will soon run afoul of a handful of kung-fu geniuses living in peaceful obscurity in a Shanghai slum called Pig Sty Alley. The Lion's Roar, secret weapon of a henpecking cigarette-puffing landlady in hair curlers, will trump a bunch of axe wielders. But the Toad Style of the Kwan Lun School, the province of an unprepossessing old man locked up in Hannibal Lecter isolation, will trump that. And then the Buddha's Palm, a celestial gift to the Chosen One, will trump that. For those who haven't found martial-arts movies to be silly enough already, this assemblage of vaudeville characters, slapstick sight gags, and Looney Tunes violations of the laws of nature will further test their limits (if any). To be sure, the brutalization of bodies for the fun of it should not bother anyone who can see no difference between, say, a cartoon coyote and a flesh-and-blood human. Director, co-writer, and star Stephen Chow has given the thing an intermittent touch of perceptible, intelligible direction, not to be confused with perceptive, intelligent direction. The unintermittent, unrelenting direction of it, in any event, is toward a new outpost, a new milestone, in the puerilization of the action film. (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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