Gong fu chu shen

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.

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.

Well, if you like kung-fu and food, this movie would obviously be for you... But you'd first have to get past a really simple plot, some really bad acting, and worse of all, a post prod voice recording! That how kung-fu movies were done like years ago, but come on, it's 2009! I only watch subbed movies, and here I felt like watching a really badly dubbed movie (you can easily notice the bad lip sync).

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.

Some time ago, I watched a mainstream trifle called "Kung Fu Panda." The only appeal it had was the idea of discipline in ordinary things. The involvement of food was incidental and comic but it mattered.

Food is not easy to film. But it is inherently cinematic stuff, and as powerful in my experience as dance. Sometimes it literally can be a dance when we are working with the preparation.

So, what if your cinematic dance conventions have evolved around kung fu scenes? Well, then you make your food dance movie using kung fu conventions. To make the point, you'll have to have lots of dialog about the honor and skill of cooking; you'd probably want to make a big deal about knives. And because (especially in China) food is about family, you'll have a plot that somehow involves familial bonds.

Well, look no further. Someone has put all this together for you. And it really isn't bad at all if you see it as a piece of precious cinema. I suppose if you expect a kung fu movie or pop star vehicle, you will be disappointed.

Here's something. How do you show taste? Ang Lee did it by focusing on color, lingering on color and texture. Kar Wai Wong shows steam, succulent steam. Greenaway (in his kitchen movie) turned the kitchen into a divine machine. Tampopo wove a whole thing about movie genres into the taste of the noodles. Babbette by contrast with cold gruel. "Grande Bouffe" just showed obsession. "Sweet Movie" gives us taste in the form of a nude orgasmic woman drenched in chocolate made with sugar aged with the corpses of children. There are more complex devices...

Here, it is a simple matter. We see the pleasure of the faces when eating. Simple. Effective.

"The more simple the dish, the harder to make well."

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.