Chan-tastic!

reviewed Mon, 30 Oct 2000

What can you say about a Jackie Chan movie?  Asses will be kicked, laughs will be had.  The gimmick of The Legend of Drunken Master is that Chan uses a fighting style called "drunken boxing," with poses like "Monkey drinking master's wine" (o-o-o-o-kay) and weaves and bobs like a wino on a trampoline.  Plus, he's a better fighter when he's actually drunk (and unlike people who claim to be better drivers when they're drunk, it's really true).  He's got some really nifty moves in this one -- clever and inventive.

In between fight scenes, Anita Mui (who's in many of Chan's Hong Kong films but is also one-third of The Heroic Trio, an all-woman crime-fighting team in the film of the same name, also starring Michelle Yeoh, which I highly recommend) steals the scenes from Chan as his strong-willed, mugging stepmother.  There are also some highly amusing British villains, who are practically twirling their mustaches à la Snidely Whiplash -- but even the unmustachioed ones clearly give away their diabolicism (diabolicity?) by their veddy British accents.  One of them even appears to be reaching for the hammy heights of Alan Rickman in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.

Drunken Master was actually made in 1994, and I think it was a sort of prequel to a film called just The Drunken Master, but it's kind of hard to tell because Chan's films tend to have about five different English titles.  It's fun to see one of these older, poorly dubbed Hong Kong films, rather than the slick, mis-matched buddy movies he's churning out lately.  Still, the dubbing seems to be intentionally poor -- the actors are plainly speaking English in many scenes, yet the synching is still off.  That seems just a tad calculated to me.  Give me Project A, Part II any day -- plus, in that one, you get pirates.

Speaking of those buddy movies, I think I have an idea for another one.  The Brits' evil doings in this film involve smuggling Chinese artifacts out of the country, robbing the people of their heritage.  So how about a wacky action flick where Chan teams up with, say, Graham Greene to steal back the Kennewick Man's remains from the Smithsonian (yeah, I know they already returned most of the remains, but this could be a period piece), or track down Geronimo's skull?

In the spirit of the evening, I will share with you my sadly appropriate fortune that I got from a fortune cookie at a restaurant in Minneapolis last week:  "Being pitied isn't such a bad thing.  Try to enjoy it before it turns into contempt."

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