Onward

Tonight, I saw the new Pixar movie, “Onward,” which came out three weeks ago, and I will let everyone know what I thought about it.

Two teenage elf brothers go out to find out if there’s any magic left in the world in this latest film by Pixar. The filmmakers work hard to create some of the magic, but it’s a laborious task.

“Onward” is a suburban fairytale where the supernatural been out of date by labor-saving machines and addictive digital devices.

Unicorns search in dumpsters and growl at anyone who tries to approach them. Dragons have been domesticated.

The fearsome Manticore, voiced by Octavia Spencer, has remodeled her ancient, Gothic castle as a family restaurant. She now restricts her firebreathing abilities to lighting the candles on children’s birthday cakes.

On the night of Ian Lightfoot’s (Tom Holland) 16^th birthday, he receives a strange gift from his late father – an ancient staff, an enchanted stone, and a spell. Everybody, including his wife, Laurel (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), thought Wilden Lightfood (Kyle Bornheimer) was an accountant, but it turns out he was a secret wizard.

With the help of his annoying older brother, Barley, a Dungeons and Dragons fan, voiced by Chris Pratt, Ian manages to bring half the dad he has never met from the otherworld before he loses control of his new magical abilities.

The two siblings have exactly one day to complete the spell before their dad is gone for good. To complete the spell, they must find a rare gem.

Vicky Roach said in his review, “And so they embark upon a perilous quest in Barley’s barely roadworthy Kombi van to locate said item before the clock runs out.”

Roach continued, “If malicious sprites don’t get them, a booby-trapped maze surely will. But each challenge reveals hitherto unexpected emotional resources in Onward’s timid, self-doubting hero.”

Ian’s livid fight with Manticore surprises everyone, including himself.

Roach mentioned, “And there’s an extremely tense scene in which he traverses a yawning chasm solely by maintaining his faith in his own capabilities.”

Ian’s brother, Braley, does not have an emotional part, but he’s just a comic relief.

Roach commented, “Pratt conveys the aching vulnerability beneath his character’s blustering bravado. Holland is just as relatable as the cripplingly shy introvert.”

It’s the vibrant between the two brothers, both who are struggling to grieve over the loss of their father, that is the main focus of this film.

Also, if the demon released from the magical gem’s curse is a little underwhelming, it’s great to see two middle-aged women release their inner fighters.

Roach ended his review by saying, “Onward isn’t as fully realised as the best Pixar films but because the animation studio has set the bar so very high, even its second-tier product is strong.”

Don’t worry, this is another Pixar movie that everyone can go watch when it gets released on Disney+ early April. You will love it, I promise. Definitely another one that I think the whole family can watch. Just not on the same level as some of Pixar’s best work. Still, this is a nice, heartwarming, relatable film that everyone can sit and watch.

Thank you for joining in on tonight’s review, stay tuned next Friday for the continuation of “Jackie Chan Month.”

Shanghai Knights

Roger Ebert started his review of “Shanghai Knights,” released in 2003, "Shanghai Knights" has a nice mix of calculation and relaxed goofiness, and in Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, once again teams up two playful actors who manifestly enjoy playing their ridiculous roles. The world of the action comedy is fraught with failure, still more so the period-Western-kung fu comedy, but here is a movie, like its predecessor "Shanghai Noon" (2000), that bounds from one gag to another like an eager puppy.”

The movie starts with the necessary action prologue that is needed in the Screenwriter’s Code: The Great Seal of China is stolen by evil villains, and its guardian killed. The guardian is obviously the father (Kim Chan) of Chon Wang (Jackie Chan), who, as we see him after the opening credits, is sheriff of Carson City, Nevada, and busy ticking off the names of the villains he has apprehended. Hearing of the murder from his beautiful sister Chon Lin (Fann Wong), Wang rushes to New York to see his old friend Roy O’Bannon (Owen Wilson).

The movie’s plot is completely random. Ebert said, “Nothing has to happen in Nevada, New York or its ultimate location, London, although I suppose the setup does need to be in China.” Every new scene is just there to set up the comedy, martial arts, or both. Because the comedy is fun in a wide, friendly way, and because Chan and his co-stars (including Fann Wong) are martial-arts experts, and because the director, David Dobkin, keeps the movie filled with energy and support, the movie is just the type of mindless entertainment we would like to see after every one of December’s famous and important Oscar finalists.

Ebert said, “The plot moves to London because, I think, that's where the Great Seal and the evil plotters are, and even more because it needs fresh locations to distinguish the movie from its predecessor. The filmmakers click off locations like Sheriff Chan checking off the bad guys: The House of Lords, Buckingham Palace (fun with the poker-faced guards), Whitechapel and an encounter with Jack the Ripper, Big Ben (homage to Harold Lloyd), Madame Tussaud's. Charlie Chaplin and Arthur Conan Doyle make surprise appearances, surprises I will not spoil.”

Ebert continued, “For Jackie Chan, "Shanghai Knights" is a comeback after the dismal "The Tuxedo" (2002), a movie that made the incalculable error of depriving him of his martial-arts skills and making him the captive of a cybernetic suit. Chan's character flip-flopped across the screen in computer-generated action, which is exactly what we don't want in a Jackie Chan movie.” What we like to see is him doing his own stunts, and the audience knows it.

They know it, along with other reasons, because over the closing credits there are always outtakes where Chan and his co-stars miss signs, fall wrong, get hurt and hop on different body parts, and burst out laughing. Ebert said, “he outtakes are particularly good this time, even though I cannot help suspecting (unfairly, maybe) that some of them are just as staged as the rest of the movie.”

Believe it or not, I saw this movie before I saw the first movie. I understand everything just fine and later went back to see the first one. I thought this was either just as funny, or better than the first one. If you loved the first one, then you should see the sequel. Don’t miss your chance to see this one.

Even though this is the last Friday of March, we’re not done with “Jackie Chan Month.” Stay tuned next week when we talk about more films that this great actor has been in.

Jumanji Sequels

For today, I thought I would review a series of sequels to “Jumanji” that I never got around to seeing until rather recently. No, I didn’t binge watch them, but I saw them over time. Let’s get things started with the first sequel, “Zathura,” released in 2005.

Roger Ebert started his review out by saying, “The opening credits of "Zathura" are closeups of an old science-fiction board game, a game that should have existed in real life and specifically in my childhood, but which was created for this movie. In these days of high-tech video games, it's remarkable that kids once got incredibly thrilled while pushing little metal racing cars around a cardboard track: The toy car was yours, and you invested it with importance and enhanced it with fantasy and pitied it because it was small, like you were.”

These games are what help kills time on the boredom of long Saturdays. In “Zathura,” time is dragging with Walter and Danny Budwing, two brothers, one 10 and the other 6, whose father has left them home alone for a few hours. Not completely alone: Their teenage sister Lisa is tasked to babysit, from the comfort of her own bed with her iPod. Walter and Danny fight, as brothers always do. Danny hides in the dumbwaiter (something that will be shocking to any child who is watching this movie), and Walter lowers him into the basement, which for all children is a place that is very scary and dark with something creeping in the corners.

In the basement, Danny (Jonah Bobo) finds the Zathura board game and tries to get Walter (Josh Hutcherson) to play with him. Walter instead wants to watch sports on TV. Danny plays by himself. The game is an original metal device. You wind up the board and push a button, and your spaceship moves around the board, and the game ejects a card for you to read. Danny has Walter help him read it: Meteor Shower. Take Evasive Action. That’s where a meteor shower happens, burning through the living room ceiling and destroying the floor, crushing coffee tables and floor lamps.

The game takes the children to outer space where they have a surprising journey. The movie cleverly tries to not explain everything. The game is just like the one in “Jumanji,” which brought out so many scary animals and dangerous threats, and is another novel adaptation by the same author, Chris Van Allsburg, who also wrote the book that inspired “The Polar Express.” The differences between the three movies are essential: “The Polar Express” is a creative story, “Jumanji” is a scary tale where the children face scary threats that we see in nightmares, and Zathura is the only board game that lives up to the picture on the box.

One element to the film’s likability is during the meteor shower: The living room is destroyed, but Danny and Walter are safe. They run all over to avoid the meteors, but actually the meteors avoid them. Incredible things will occur the more they play Zathura, but they will survive. That does explain why they can still breathe when they open the front door to see that their house is in space.

Ebert said, “"Zathura" is the third film directed by Jon Favreau, an actor who, like Ron Howard, was possibly born to be a director. His first film was "Made" (2001), his second was "Elf" (2003) and his next will be inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, a series I have always assumed was unfilmable, but on the basis of these three films, maybe not. Favreau brings a muscular solidity to his special effects; they look not like abstract digital perfection but as if hammered together from plywood, aluminum and concept cars. By that I don't mean they look cheap, I mean they have the kind of earnest sincerity you can find on the covers of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Since you may not know of this publication, I urge you to Google "Thrilling Wonder Stories magazine" and click on "images." You'll find the same kind of breathless pulp absurdity that "Zathura" brings to a boil.”

The brothers take turns. The game is endless. Another card reads Shipmate Enters Cryonic Sleep Chamber. This causes their sister Lisa, who, like every teen, is a late sleeper, has been frozen stiff in her bathroom. Ebert noted, “Other cards produce (a) a fearsome but badly coordinated robot, whose designers spent more time on its evil glowing red eyes than on its memory chips, (b) giant alien lizards who are directly from the pulp sci-fi tradition of bug-eyed monsters, (c) assault fire from spaceships that look like junkyard porpoises, and (d) a descent into a black hole. As the two kids hang on for dear life and lizards get sucked into the black hole, I was reminded of the kind of hubris celebrated by such Thrilling Wonder Stories titles as "Two Against Neptune."”

What is great is that Danny and Walter are predictably not going to get hurt. Alien lazar shots large amounts of their house, but never the amounts where they’re standing, and the giant lizards seem busier with overacting than eating the brothers. Ebert said, “The young actors, Hutcherson and Bobo, bring an unaffected enthusiasm to their roles, fighting with each other like brothers even when threatened with broasting by a solar furnace.” Their father is played by Tim Robbins; however his part is mainly him not being in the movie. Kristen Stewart makes the most of the sister Lisa’s non-frozen parts and there is the Astronaut, played by Dax Shepard, who enters the film at the climax and helps protect the kids from space dangers. Lisa’s crush on the Astronaut does get sick after the twist is revealed, although I do think people, like myself, might be able to figure it out sooner.

Ebert said, “"Zathura" lacks the undercurrents of archetypal menace and genuine emotion that informed "The Polar Express," a true classic that is being re-released again this year. But it works gloriously as space opera. We're going through a period right now in which every video game is being turned into a movie, resulting in cheerless exercises such as "Doom," which mindlessly consists of aliens popping up and getting creamed.” “Zathura” is based on a different type of game, where the players are not just shooting at targets, but are actually in real events that they need to figure out. They are active players, not passive marksmen. Nobody gets killed in “Zathura.” Unless you want to think about what happens to the lizards on the other side of the black hole.

Next up we have “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” released in 2017. There’s one main problem with this movie: everything takes place inside a videogame, which means the characters and problems are all virtual, which keeps them from being very exciting. Rich Cline said in his review, “That said, the filmmakers seriously go for broke, filling scenes with riotous action and sparky comedy.” This is rather entertaining if you can ignore how basic and obvious everything is.

When serving detention, four teens find the old videogame Jumanji. Smart kid, but shy Spencer (Alex Wolff), social media addict Bethany (Madison Iseman), athlete Fridge (Ser’Darius Blain) and loner Martha (Morgan Turner) are suddenly sucked into a jungle videogame where they, respectively, become adventurer Smolder Bravestone (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), Professor Shelly Oberon (Jack Black), sidekick Moose Finbar (Kevin Hart) and action girl Roby Roundhouse (Karen Gillan). They have the mission of saving Jumanji by saving a giant jewel stolen by an archaeologist (Bobby Cannavle). Later in the game, they also meet Alex (Nick Jonas), who has no idea how long he’s been stuck in the game.

Cline noted, “The filmmakers seem to think that, since this story has a gaming premise, they can get away with glaringly contrived writing and sub-par digital effects. But that only further undermines any real sense of dread. The characters may only have three lives in this game, but there's never any possibility that one of them will lose their last one. And the preposterous nature of the level-by-level plot never allows space for anything more interesting to happen either in relationships or self-discovery.”

Cline continued, “That said, there's still an escapist charm at work here, and the cast is largely to thank for this. Johnson gleefully plays on his uber-hunk charm, Hart indulges in his sassiest banter, and Gillan gets to combine Martha's inner dork with a Lara Croft-style of action fierceness.” However, it’s Jack Black who has the most fun imitating a 16-year-old girl, especially when he can’t help but have an instant crush on Nick Jonas.

Cline noted, “While the movie appears to be aimed at a family audience, there's a strange hyper-violent attitude that, while never too explicit, is much harsher than necessary. And the gross-out jokes go a couple of steps too far for younger viewers.” For everyone else, this is the type of movie that isn’t really bad once you don’t think too deeply. It’s fast and silly, with gaming action and easy jokes. Strangely enough, it does have a kind of doubtfully resemblance on “The Breakfast Club.”

Finally we come to the latest installment, “Jumanji: The Next Level,” released in 2019. Any movie that has Awkwafina impersonating a crabby Danny DeVito can’t be completely bad. The young comedian with the grouchy old voice is a great task for the young actress. Margot Harrison said in her review, “And the body-swapping conceit of the Jumanji 2.0 movies gives her a chance to do her best old coot, her mouth tugging into a sour upside-down "V" as she demands to know what she's doing inside a video game.”

Why is this now a video game? “Jumanji” was a kids’ adventure film about a board game that brought jungle dangers to the children. In 2017, the board game changed into a video game to probably be updated, somewhat. In “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” teens saw that they were teleported into an old-school video game where they played out a jungle-themed adventure in the bodies of game characters that are rip-offs of “Indiana Jones.”

Harrison said, “But the real raison d'être of the holiday hit was comedy — specifically, stars playing comically against type.” In the Jumanji game, the high school nerd, Spencer, was playing the fearless, strong adventurer Dr. Smolder Bravestone. The football star, Fridge, became a miniature sidekick Moose Finbar. The beauty addict Bethany had to be in the body of Jack Black, and the wallflower Martha was the tough Ruby Roundhouse, with one of the strengths being “dance fighting.” Harrison noted, “Wackiness ensues and, by the end, everybody's learned a little lesson about exploring their potential.”

“The Next Level” follows the same formula, with one exception: This time around, director Jake Kasdan and his co-writers, Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg, add a grumpy-old-men side-story. Home from college for the holidays, Spencer has to deal with his illogical grandfather, Eddie (DeVito), whose favorite thing to do is complain at his former coworker, Milo Walker (Danny Glover). When Spencer goes back into the Jumanji game, his friends go to find him, and the fighting senior citizens get pulled in as well.

Harrison noted, “This setup occasions some reshuffling of real-world characters and their in-game avatars, plus patient explanations of the game's mechanics to seniors (actually aimed at audience members who missed the first installment). Otherwise, the story proceeds in familiar fashion. Once again, the characters must complete a generic quest in a series of generic settings enlivened by ferocious digital beasts (ostriches, mandrills, a toothy hippo). Once again, each player has just three lives to lose in various gross ways. Once again, adult viewers may find their minds wandering during the boilerplate action sequences.”

Once again, the comedy of actors acting strange is the movie’s highlight. Harrison said, “Only Johnson and Awkwafina (as a thief avatar called Ming Fleetfoot) get really juicy bits this time, but they savor them, and the snarking on clichés of the action-adventure genre keeps the time passing enjoyably enough.” If the lessons learned aren’t really affecting this time around, at least they’re a reminder that people can change at any age.

Harrison noted, “The Next Level enticed a record number of holiday shoppers into theaters last weekend, rendering further levels of Jumanji inevitable. Will we ever learn what sort of sadist designed this magical, morphing game (which survived being smashed at the end of the previous film) to trap unwary youngsters and oldsters? Will we ever see anyone perma-die, or must that be reserved for the R-rated gritty Jumanji reboot? Just how intensely can Dr. Bravestone (whose official skill list includes "intense smoldering") smolder before he explodes?” For this franchise, it’s not completely over, especially if you stick around for the mid-credits scene.

I’m sorry to say, but after “Jumanji” and “Zathura,” the franchise doesn’t have the same feel that it once had. I don’t like how they changed the board game into a video game, but they’re dumb action comedy flicks. If you want to watch them, go right ahead, but the last movie was just so absurd. Just see “Jumanji” and “Zathura” and not the last two movies. I think the next one they release will go back to the original format, but that’s questionable.

Thank you for joining in on tonight’s review. Check in this Friday for the continuation of “Jackie Chan Month.”

Shanghai Noon

Jean-Luc Godard was famous for saying that the best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie. Roger Ebert said in his review, “In that spirit, "Shanghai Noon" is the answer to "Wild Wild West," although I am not sure these are the kinds of movies Godard had in mind.” Jackie Chan’s 2000 action comedy is a combination of a Western, martial arts and buddy movie – enhanced by a hilarious performance by Owen Wilson, who would dominate the movie if Chan were not as smart at sharing it with him.

The basic story is that it takes place in China, the Forbidden City in 1881. The princess, played by Lucy Liu, hates her destiny and hates her arranged husband. Her teacher, played by Henry O, offers to help her escape to the United States. She is kidnapped and held for money in Nevada. The three best imperial guards (Rongguang Yu, Cui Ya Hui and Eric Chen) are selected to rescue her. Chan goes along as a baggage for his uncle, who is their interpreter. In Nevada, Chan joins with a train robber named Roy O’Bannon (Wilson), and they rescue the princess with a lot of help from an Indian maiden (Brandon Merrill).

Ebert noted, “The plot, of course, is only a clothesline for Chan's martial arts sequences, Wilson's funny verbal riffs and a lot of low humor. Material like this can be very bad. Here it is sort of wonderful, because of a light touch by director Tom Dey, who finds room both for Chan's effortless charm and for a droll performance by Wilson, who, if this were a musical, would be a Beach Boy.”

Wilson had reached a point where people started to like him. Most movie fans didn’t know who he was. Ebert said, “If you see everything, you'll remember him from "Bottle Rocket," where he was engaging, and "Minus Man," where he was profoundly disturbing.” This movie made him into a star. He is really smart and flexible to be casted in a small role (his career also had him writing for “Bottle Rocket” and “Rushmore”), but seeing what he did in “Shanghai Noon,” he could play the same roles as Adam Sandler.

Chan’s character is named Chon Wang (yes, we all know what it really sounds like). Just like in “Rush Hour,” he plays a man of small words and a lot of fist. Chris Tucker in “Rush Hour” and Wilson in this one are fast talkers who make up for Chan’s poor English, which is nothing because his martial arts scenes are the best. Ebert said, “He's famous for using the props that come to hand in every fight, and here there is a sequence involving several things we didn't know could be done with evergreen trees.”

Liu, as the princess, is not a pretty girl that needs to be saved, but brave and spirited, and motivated by the troubles of her Chinese country men who have been made indentured servants in a Nevada gold town. Ebert said, “She doesn't want to return to China, but to stay in the United States--as a social worker or union organizer, I guess.” Not so greatly played is Merrill’s Indian woman, who is married to Chon Wang in a ceremony that nobody really takes seriously and that the movie itself has evidently forgotten all about the time that last scene was done.

Ebert noted, “Her pairing with Jackie Chan does however create a funny echo of "A Man Called Horse," and on the way out of the theater I was challenged by my fellow critic Sergio Mims to name all the other movie references. He claimed to have spotted, I think, 24. My mind boggled.”

What “Shanghai Noon” does – and here was a problem people had with “Wild Wild West” – is that no matter how much effort is in the production values and special effects, a movie like this finally depends on dialogue and characters. “Wild Wild West,” which came out exactly a year before this, had an all-star cast (Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh) but what were they tasked with? Ebert answered, “Plow through dim-witted dialogue between ungainly f/x scenes. Here Wilson angles onscreen and starts riffing, and we laugh. And Chan, who does his own stunts, creates moments of physical comedy so pure, it's no wonder he has been compared with Buster Keaton.” If you see only one martial arts Western (and there is a high chance of that), this is the one.

This is another hilarious buddy movie that Chan had starred in. Owen Wilson is one of the funniest comedians ever, hands down, and he works will with Chan. If you liked the “Rush Hour” movies, like I do, then see this one just to see how Chan works with another comedian. Also, what’s good about this is that it’s just not one genre. It’s a combination of different genres, which I listed earlier. You’ll love this movie, I promise you that.

Look out next week to see how the sequel to this movie was in “Jackie Chan Month.”

The Legend of Drunken Master

Jackie Chan, like all others who come to Hollywood, wants one thing: global domination. For a period of five years or so, he was struggling to overwhelm one part of the world he has no control over, USA.

Chan tried to win American audiences by fighting on their ways, in a series of films that randomly played with the principles of the Western thriller, some of which were funny (like “Rush Hour”) and some which were really bad (some might say “Rumble in the Bronx”). However, in some way none of them really dominated, took over, stood out and destroyed everything else, as Chan preferred.

When “The Legend of Drunken Master” came out in 2000, Jackie Chan was saying, “I now return to my old ways. Old ways are better.”

Stephen Hunter said in his review, “In fact, "The Legend of Drunken Master" is itself an old way. It's a 1994 film – original title "Jui Kuen II," which translates literally into "Drunken Fists II" – that was made primarily for the Asian market without the genre-bending necessary for a big American release. It's really a Hong Kong kung fu opera, unrepentant, full out, sans apology or explanation, goofy as heck, broadly silly and . . . astonishing.”

Chan plays Wong Fei-hung, the ill-behaved son of herb doctor Wong Kei-ying, played by Ti Lung, somewhere in China in maybe the 20s, as it looks like. Traveling to Siberia to look for rare herbs, he tries to avoid paying them on a train trip home by hiding them in the English ambassador’s luggage. As you might have guessed, he picks up the wrong box, and gets an antiquity (an ancient seal) that the ambassador is exporting back to England for the British Museum.

However, someone else is trying to find the missing seal, a Manchurian officer who wants to return it to…first off, a little sidetrack. I want to mention Wong’s funny stepmother and Mah-Jong player, played by Anita Mui, and other minor characters. The dubbing may be bad and some might call (kindly) Asian plot patterns, which means mainly “anything goes at any time.”

Now time to mention the fight scenes.

These are some of the best choreographed fights. One of them has Chan and the Manchurian, played by Chi-Kwong Cheung, in a spear-and-sword fight in a small area (i.e., under a railway car). The blades and spear points are at such great speed and precision and you wouldn’t think that two crouching men could be so fast and perfect in a small area and come out not injured.

Hunter credited, “If limits define that fight, lack of limits define the next, which features the two (now partners) fighting about a hundred ninja types. I mean it: The directors (Chan himself and Chia-Liang Liu) make you believe two against a hundred in a whirling melee that careens through (and destroys) buildings left and right, as the two keep picking up and improvising weapons from broken furniture to splayed bamboo poles to fists and hands. And, oh yes, Chan is drunk (an actual kung fu style, evidently) at the time. So not only is he doing incredible things physically, he's doing them in the character of a drunk!”

However, the final fight is the best. Here, Chan fights against Ken Lo, who was actually both Chan’s real-life bodyguard and a martial arts champ, and appeared to have the fastest left food ever. Lo fights on his right foot, and his left, held before him, is faster and more swift than a fist, able to block, dodge, force and kick with such ability. Hunter admitted, “I've literally never seen anything like it.”

Hunter continued, “They are in a steel mill, and my goodness if that isn't an actual bed of red-hot coals there next to them (Chan rolls through it), and dad-gum it if Chan isn't actually set on fire two or three times, during which he (a) keeps on fighting and (b) keeps on pretending to be drunk.” This has to be seen to be believed.

I saw this movie before I saw the first one. Even though it may be considered a sequel, you don’t have to see the first one to understand this one. I think this has got to be one of Chan’s best works he has ever done. It’s definitely one of my favorite Chan movies ever. You just have to see this movie if you’re a Chan fan. I give this one a high recommendation.

Sorry for posting this really late, I had a really busy day. Stay tuned next week when we continue the hilarity of “Jackie Chan Month.”

Drunken Master

We’re going to have a smash-hit over the course of the next couple of months, which is something I have never done before. This time we’re going to look at one of the best martial arts actors of all time, Jackie Chan. He’s the perfect successor to Bruce Lee, who has done all of his stunts and has broken practically every bone and has survived. Let’s jump right in with the 1978 breakout film, “Drunken Master.”

Amongst the “Rush Hour” trilogy and “The Spy Next Door” of his more recent career, it’s easy to forget that Jackie Chan was once the rightful descendant to cinema’s greatest martial artist, Bruce Lee.” Christopher Machell said in his review, “Eureka’s new release of the 1978 Drunken Master, one of Chan’s earliest and best pictures, is a sure-fire reminder of his status as cinema’s prince of kung fu. Where Lee’s classic films were semi-serious affairs, typically combining crime, intrigue and philosophy, Chan’s modus operandi has always been comedy, with Drunken Master more slapstick than fist of fury.”

Chan plays the biographical 19^th Century martial artist Wong Fei-Hung, who in the film is a prankster to his kung fu master and showing off to his friends. Machell said, “On paper, there’s little to like about the feckless Fei-Hung, but Chan invests a typically guileless charm to the role, making his Fei-Hung almost sympathetic as he ducks out of huge restaurant bills, cuts corners in his training and generally acts the clown.” After humiliating the son of a rich noble, Fei-Hung’s father sends him to train with the infamous kung fu master Beggar So, played by Siu Tin Yuen, whose rough reputation slightly leads his heavy drinking. Machell mentioned, “After a fracas in a restaurant, the drunken beggar reveals himself, Yoda-style, as the Master So, who promises to train Fei-Hung for a year.” Meanwhile, the scary contract killer Yim Tit-sam, played by Jang Lee Hwang, is hired by an enemy of Fei-Hung’s father to get rid of him. However, given Fei-Hung’s prankster ability – and a humiliating early fight with Tit-sam – it’s unlikely whether he’ll ever be able to become a true kung fu master. Machell said, “Despite the high-stakes, Drunken Master is in no hurry to get to its destination, the plot languorously winding through a series of loosely connected vignettes. At nearly two hours, the film’s charm wears thin in parts, and Chan’s gurning is only funny for so long.”

Machell continued, “But the film’s longueurs are easily forgivable when set next to such captivating martial arts choreography.” “Drunken Master” was directed by Yuen Woo-Ping – who would later choreograph “The Matrix’s” fight scenes – so it’s undeniable that the action here is good, but the unmatched dance movement of Chan and his co-stars is just mind-blowing. Even Beggar So jokes that Fei-Hung’s kung fu is more like dancing than fighting, but when the steps are this beautiful, who’s to complain? The final kung fu fight is as complex and long as you would think.

Machell complimented, “As Fei-Hung fights Yim Tit-sam with the styles of the eight drunken gods, it’s a comedy-action bit that is easily as thrilling and stylish as if it were played straight. It’s true that some of the film’s comedy is a little broad, and the film’s laconic plot is baggy compared to the pacey intrigue of your typical Bruce Lee flick, but there’s no denying Chan’s charm as a performer, nor the beauty of the astonishing skill captured by Woo-Ping’s camera.” Funny, exciting, and little lengthy, “Drunken Master” is as likable as it is disturbed, but its martial arts choreography is still one of the best.

If you haven’t seen this film and you’re a Jackie Chan fan, then you should see it. If you got into Jackie Chan during the 90s and early 2000s, like I did, then you should definitely see his older movies, starting with this one. That way, you can see how he was like. This is one of the greatest films ever made and you need to see it.

Much later on, they made a sequel to this movie. If you want to know how that one is, stay tuned next week to find out in “Jackie Chan Month.”