With
his recent films, Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle, Hong Kong
writer-director-star Stephen Chow has made a conscious effort to reach out to
an international audience, with simple, accessible plots packed with cartoon-y
special effects. But for much of his career, he's worked alongside a coterie of
comedy actors and directors, turning out frantic parodies that are nigh-incomprehensible
to anyone not heavily steeped in Chinese history and culture. Fortunately,
slapstick comedy and wu xia pageantry are fairly universal. In 1992's two Royal
Tramp movies,
written and co-directed by frequent Chow collaborator Jing Wong, it's sometimes
difficult to understand exactly why Chow is running around in sped-up motion with his
pigtail sticking straight out from his head, but that doesn't make it any less
funny to watch.
In
their broadest particulars, the Royal Tramp plots (drawn from a
popular '60s Chinese serial novel) more or less make sense: The first
introduces Chow as Wei Shu Bo, a clumsy, goofy, but quick-witted suck-up with
no martial-arts skills or shame. Bumbling his manic way through a series of
nested plots against the Chinese emperor, he winds up as the emperor's
confidant, spy, and weapon against a power-grubbing general. In the more
sedate, polished sequel, released the same year, rebel leader and faux empress
Brigitte Lin attempts to avenge herself on Chow. But these plotlines are buried
under an immensely complicated political background, and a lot of the nervy,
insane babble—mo lei tau, translated as "silly talk" or "nonsense
talking"—that typifies Chow's '90s films. The visual gags, like the
kung-fu strike that turns a man into pink goo, are hilarious, but the lengthy
sequences focusing on a eunuch's pickled penis are harder to grasp. Or stomach.
The
Weinstein Company's two-disc set of the Royal Tramp films leave a lot to be
desired—the subtitles don't cover signs or all the dialogue, and they're
weirdly colloquial, with characters calling each other nerds and shouting
"Baloney!" with surprising frequency. But these discs contain invaluable
commentary tracks from Hong Kong film expert Bey Logan, who explains the
nonstop pop-culture references and the background behind the unfamiliar jokes.
Chow's uncontrolled, ridiculous antics are only fitfully hilarious, but knowing
exactly what cigarette ad is being parodied onscreen, or which Royal Tramp star was primarily known
for his porn films? Priceless.
Key
features:
Logan commentaries on both films and a moderately informative 10-minute
subtitled interview with Wong.