The King of Comedy vs. Eagle Shooting Heroes
This turned out to be a tough matchup, and for all the wrong reasons. I can understand why both films have advanced this far, but one was aggressively mean in a way I believe was not intended and the other was very, very stupid.
So first up is
The King of Comedy, and I like Stephen Chow. Not just the 2 that everyone likes but also From Beijing with Love. This is a pretty ambitious mix of HK filmmaking satire, and love story. Ambitious because the two subjects are given very different tones. The moviemaking stuff is inside baseball (extras as zombies, the all important box lunch defined by status), but I'm an insider so I appreciated it. There's a hilarious running gag about Chow's lunch being tossed to the dogs, only it's not some vicious hound. Each time, an adorable little puppy comes in for the food.
The love story is really sweet, surprisingly strong. Perhaps more effective that was believed on the page. It clashes with a lot of the film's broader humor. Reading the past verdicts, everyone loves the sequence with the triad kid and the naked boy whose penis fascinates Chow. I wasn't offended, I just didn't think it was funny. At all. Later on is another moment with Chow having a runny nose during a romantic audition and the snot is hanging out like putty. It got the same reaction. Not offensive, just a kind of body humor I don't laugh at.
Like South Korean films, there's an uneasy relationship between comedy and violence. There's a late scene where Chow's girl is being beaten by a guy and it isn't meant to be ugly, but her face is bleeding and I'm just thinking "too far". The film is ambitious to where I wanted to love it, but it's so off-putting at times I found it hard to even like.
Eagle Shooting Heroes actually would've matched up perfectly with Swordsman II. Both are zany, kung-fu adventures. The kind that ignore physics, reality, logic and barrel ahead with one ridiculous set-piece after another. This one isn't so heavy with the technical effects and much more reliant on characters and verbal comedy. It's like a film based on a SNL sketch, a series of kind of funny but overlong SNL sketches. For you fans of the 60s, it's Mad
Monkeys Kung Fu, from the makers of The Banana Splits. (Yes there are even musical numbers.)
I went from worry over its Tommy Boy level of stupidity to kind of enjoying it, to feeling it was overlong. (Nearly all the bits go on way past the earned laughs). It's like an omnibus film. I like the Bird/Dino/Gorilla. Didn't care for head soccer. Loved the Flirting Sword Technique (great use of faked slow motion). Best of all was seeing the cast of familiar pros act all goofy. Not stupid goofy, but you know... for kids. Matched to that was the bright, pastel-colored world, an excellent decision that adds the right note of bounce house fun.
I hesitate giving the win to Eagle Shooting Heroes because I'm confident in a poll it would lose this battle. Reading the past verdicts made it even tougher, but I have to go with my head on this. I don't think Eagle Shooting Heroes will advance any further, but it gets the win here.