Gong fu chu shen

People may be annoyed with the fight scenes in between, it was annoying yes but what remained with me was that making of dishes with a beautiful voice over explaining the significance of the method used. Visuals were good, food was treated with utmost respect and everything about the food part was poetic.

Last sequence about cabbage soup and purity was captivating.

I watched this movie back in 2013 on television and 2 or 3 times since then and I must say, The more I watch this movie the more things I discover wrong in it The made-up cooking techniques and Sammo seemd to be enough of a draw for audiences at the time but that it seems the producers thought that too as they seemed to have put no effort in the script, characters or character interrelationships The directing seemed amateurish at best and though the actors seemed perfectly competent and had chemistry with each other they were evidently stuck with a studio and director that seems to have watched "God Of Cookery" (A film made way before this one and incorporated culunary and kung fu themes in a manner far superior) once and said "Yeah, Let's just make that sort of movie" The movie's message seems to be that of family and simplicity which fortunately comes across in the movie . Some might say this is a typical turn off your brain flick but the movie's confusing continuity and pacing prevents you from doing so and in retrospect it's not surprising that the 1st watch was undoubtedly the best one Atleast it's not "Cook up a storm"

Many years ago, Sammo Hung fought with his brother for possession of the fabulous Dragon Knife; Hung's nephew witnessed the battle and his father's injury. He has vowed revenge. Now Hung has gone to work at the once fabulous but now failing restaurant run by Cherrie Ying and Ai Kago, daughters of his former master chef. He teaches Vaness Wu the philosophy and practice and great cooking. But there is a competition for Best Chef in China. Wu and his assistant must uphold the restaurant's honor, while his nephew's chefs do battle in the kitchen and his thugs threaten the sisters, with only Hung to face them.

In other words, it's half cooking competition and half martial arts movie. The jokes and gags lie in the premise, and are carried out without much in the way of comic elaboration. This is a tough thing to do, and while it is never laugh-out-loud funny, it's certainly always interesting to watch, particularly when Wu beats up on the principal of his cooking school while making fresh noodles.

Lets start by saying I watch this movie with expectation of just being entertained. Instead, I ended up have to fast forward it a few times because I can guess the storyline already.

The plots have been used literally millions of times, nothing new here. In fact, it is blatantly stealing scenes and ideas from other movies while offering nothing new.

The acting are pretty good in some scene, truly atrocious in other. Vanness Wu is playing the Stephen Chow role. He did pretty well considering he's a horrible actor. The scenes and lines that are used in this movie are truly one of the worst I've ever seen. It seems some scenes are forced just for the sake of completing the movie. Add a huge amount of logic holes and unrealism to that, and the scenes will make you think, "well that's not what normal thinking human being will do."

In conclusion: character development are very poor, plot predictable, cheesy lines, unrealistic scenes, and bad actors describe this movie perfectly. A shame for Asian movies indeed.

Right, well given my love of the Asian cinema, then of course I would watch the 2009 movie "Gong Fu Chu Shen" (aka "Kung Fu Chefs"), as I had the opportunity to do so here in 2025. Sure, I had never even heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it, so I only know whatever little about the movie as was provided by the synopsis on the back of the movie's cover. But I figured that a movie with Sammo Kam-Bo Hung in the leading role couldn't be all bad.

Come 45 minutes, very prolonged minutes I might add, into the movie, and I tossed the towel in the ring, giving up on the movie out of sheer and utter boredom and lack of interest in the narrative. This movie was about cooking, and not so much a martial arts comedy, as I was lead to believe. I am a bit impressed that writers Cyrus Cheng, Eddie Chu, Simon Liu, Po Wang and Joey Yuen collectively could muster to put together something an boring as what "Gong Fu Chu Shen" turned out to be.

There were some familiar faces on the cast list, aside from Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, the movie also had Xing Yu, Tze-Chung Lam, Louis Fannd Siu-Lung Leung on the cast list. The acting performances in the movie were fair, despite the fact that the storyline and narrative utterly failed to entertain me.

In the 45 minutes of prolonged boredom that I sat through, there were a couple of fight scenes, and they were nicely choreographed and executed, but it was nowhere sufficient to make up for a major lack in storyline.

This is not a movie that I will ever return to attempt finish watching.

My rating of director Wing-Kin Yip's 2009 movie "Gong Fu Chu Shen" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.