Kung Fu Dunk (功夫灌籃) (gong fu guan lan)
Release Date: 28 Mar 2008Overall Rating:
(1)Director: Chu Yen Ping and Tony Ching
Cast: Jay Chou, Charlene Choi, Eric Tsang, Berlin Chen
Descripton:
Based on the popular Japanese manga Slam Dunk, Kung Fu Dunk is a mixture of basketball elements from the manga and Chinese kung fu.
Write Review
Reviews
| Page 1 of 1 | 1 |
Reviewer: shibumi
Date: 22 Aug 2008
Rating:
Kung Fu Dunk is essentially a light-hearted comedy that has genuinely humorous moments. But, at the same time it tries to pack in too many themes like martial arts, the supernatural, good versus evil, fate, family identity and boy meets girl. The disparate ideas don't marry well and the film therefore does not take off for me. It is not epic enough to handle these themes and everything is squashed into the battle on a basketball court.
The film is at times very formulistic like men squaring off and spectacularly trashing a place that seems to be de rigueur for martial arts films nowadays. It has also borrowed ideas from other films like seeing the true nature of people through a drinks bottle which was a Smirnoff vodka advert; the running at speed to reverse time which was similar to the Superman film; and the thunder and lightning with similar opening musical bars from Walt Disney's dramatisation of Mussorgsky's Night on the Bare Mountain.
Kevin Chu, the director, has recognised Jay's talent for comedy but there are times when it just doesn't work. It could perhaps be the wrong type of humour for Jay or that he needs to be directed better when it comes to slapstick, physical, Charlie Chaplin type of humour. Jay would need the same body control that Chaplin had to pull it off.
Jay is an minimalist understated actor and therefore can handle close ups very well, in particular conveying emotions through the eyes and with the minimum of movement. Unfortunately, this was not fully exploited in the film.
There was one scene which I found difficult to watch - the scene where Jay's character is punished for breaking the school rules and is given a beating. It is difficult to watch because I realised Jay taps into something here; he understands violence very well.
Finally also to say Eric Tsang was brilliantly cast in this film.
My recommendation is if you want to watch a light-hearted, quirky, humorous film, this fits the bill.
| Page 1 of 1 | 1 |