Chop until you drop

It is difficult not to enjoy Kung Fu Hustle, however many martial-arts movies have blistered recent screens. This surely has something to do with the fact that Stephen Chow, its producer, director, writer and star is clearly enjoying it vastly, too.

The story is absurd. Set tactfully in pre-revolutionary China, it has a small-time thief aspiring to be a member of the celebrated Axe Gang, which rules the city. To impress them, he arrives in the poor ghetto of Pig Sty Alley and attempts to extort money. But he gets more than he bargains for - as do the Axe Gang who follow him in.

Some legendary martial-arts masters, and mistresses, are unearthed and several marvellously choreographed and animated battles ensue. Naturally, good wins out in the end.

If this seems not very different from a hundred and one other kung fu epics, its gallows humour allows it to stand apart. The inventive comic-book character drawing, as well as the swingeing action, give the film life and energy, especially where two veteran stars are concerned.

They are both treasures: Yuen Qiu plays Pig Sty Alley's chief landlady, a woman who can shout so loud that walls thicker than Jericho's fall down; and Leung Siu Lung, one of the Three Dragons of the Seventies, along with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, is The Beast, the most fearsome fighter of all.

The production design is good enough to make you regret the encounters that smash it up so thoroughly. Yet if Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger and Zhang Yimou's Hero were spectacularly arty, Hustle is totally tarty, appealing to the basic melodramatics of the old chopsocky genre with all the new CG effects from Hollywood at Chow's disposal.

As an admiring parody, it is distinctly funnier than Shaolin Soccer, a previous Chow hit, and as a tribute to the type of kung-fu movies he grew up on, it could hardly be better mounted.

But the best thing about Kung Fu Hustle is that it manages to be irreverent and funny without sneering at the genre. A difficult feat, but triumphantly successful in Chow's hands.

Kung Fu Hustle
Cert: cert15