Kung Fu Hustle
You know the sound Elmer Fudd makes when he's shaking off some lipstick or prank Bugs Bunny has planted on him? A sort of jowl-flapping, high-speed ''wubba-wubba-wubba"? That's pretty much the appropriate critical response -- perhaps the only critical response -- to ''Kung Fu Hustle," an action comedy that suggests ''Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" crossbred with a Warner Bros. cartoon and for which the word ''ridiculous" is a high compliment. Writer-director-action-star Stephen Chow has been a household name in Asia for more than a decade without ever breaking through here. I doubt US audiences will forget him now.
In ''Hustle," Chow doesn't break new ground so much as stretch old cliches like Silly Putty. Set in a candy-colored pre-World War II Chinese slum, the film concerns the struggle between the powerful Axe Gang and the poor, downtrodden denizens of Pig Sty Alley. Familiar stuff, except that the Axes dress in top hats and tails and dole out mayhem with the precision of a Busby Berkeley dance routine.
Their victims are hardly shrinking violets. Unbeknownst to one another, the Alley's tailor (Chiu Chi Ling), baker (Dong Zhi Hua), and coolie (Xing Yu) all happen to be retired fighting legends, with expertise in the esoterica of metal arm rings and fighting staffs. That's only the start of the curveballs Chow tosses in ''Hustle," a movie that democratically suggests everyone has a martial arts superpower if only they know where to look.
Chow hasn't met a stereotype he can't subvert. The character of the lone hero who shows up to protect the village is replaced by Sing (the director himself), a scrawny con man and gangster wannabe so hapless he can't toss a knife without impaling himself. (''Have you ever killed anybody?" Sing is asked. ''I've thought about it," is the affable reply.) Meanwhile, the closest ''Hustle" comes to a damsel in distress is the character of Landlady (the unforgettable Yuen Qiu), who stomps through the Alley with curlers in her hair, a cigarette wedged in her mouth, and a backhand for anyone foolish enough to mouth off. In a movie full of larger-than-life figures, the Landlady is Godzilla.
It's style, not plot or character, that gets Chow's juices going. ''Hustle" uses computer-enhanced stunts to merrily bend the laws of physics: A chase on foot becomes a Roadrunneresque blur of legs as characters careen over buildings and cars. Sing's sidekick, named Sidekick (Lam Tze Chung), is an easygoing fatty whose bulk slooshes with water-bed sound effects when he's jostled. When the Axes hire two blind assassins to dispatch the Alley-ites, the killers turn out to be musicians who can unleash waves of mystical swords and fists with each strum of their lute.
(As to that MPAA rating, by the way: The Miramax cut of Chow's previous film, the highly recommended ''Shaolin Soccer," was rated PG-13, and while ''Hustle" is comparatively violent -- more in the threat of all those axes than in what they actually do -- the cartoonish humor and cheeky attitude make it a natural for teenage audiences. I'd say 13 and up; adjust according to the tastes and sensitivities of your brood.)
As with many of the Chinese imports that have reached our shores in recent years, the action has been choreographed with balletic, hard-hitting dreaminess by Yuen Wo Ping (''Crouching Tiger," the ''Matrix" trilogy). But the anarchic humor and sardonic, Tex Avery-inspired timing are very much Chow's. ''Kung Fu Hustle" is both sharper and sillier than a Jackie Chan film; if anything, Hong Kong aficionados may be put in mind of Tsui Hark's action farces of the early 1980s, ''Shanghai Blues" and ''Peking Opera Blues."
But ''Hustle" goes much further than those movies into fable and absurdity. By the end it has nearly left behind narrative sense, with characters changing personality at the director's whim and such baroque tangents as a villainous toad master and a cloud in the shape of the Buddha. Like a meal prepared by an extreme chef, ''Hustle" is more than a bit of a mess. It still tastes like nothing you've ever had before.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
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