A power struggle between the Queen's treasonous lover and a princess occurs amid musical numbers, slapstick battles, and martial arts acrobatics.
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Reviews
What a waste of my time!!!
An action-packed slog
A Brilliant Conflict
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
This is for me one of the funniest movies ever. It has slapstick, cross-dressing, gender-bending, confused identities, ridiculous costumes, over the top martial arts battles and some cultural references I didn't get. Don't try to figure out the plot or story line there isn't much of either one of those. But there are a number of laugh out loud moments, I think the movie might be much funnier in Cantonese, the English subtitles seem to work well here. Spoiler here, one of the funniest moments in the movie is when one of the characters starts singing to the melody of the intro of the William Tell overture, that cracks me up every time I see it. So there you have it this movie is the winner of "Best Use of the William Tell Overture(with lyrics)" I can only imagine how much funnier it is in Cantonese.
There is a wind that blows and all the good things grow with it. After the wind is gone, the good things turn back and never come any good things alike again.So this film is from a wind that was blowing during that span of years in Hong Kong, never again you would be able to see those director, actors, screen writers, dress designers, stunt man so passionate and joyfully getting involved for fun, for imagination, for successful results.The same name, even same director had shot anther one with the same Chinese name in 2011. It's rated very low in IMDb and it's rated like 3 in a Chinese review site. You can see how people hated it because the lack of dedication of the actors, the ridiculous taking-audience-as-a-fool jokes and random involvements of all the celebrities from musical industries into the acting business and they are naively thinking themselves that they are doing a good job. It's a shame, as simple as it is.But this film has stars in it, real stars. Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung, Carina Lau Brigitte Lin, Jacky Cheung...I just can't name them all here. The director is the same director who 2 years later directed the 2-squeal films (A Chinese Odyssey Part One: Pandora's Box, A Chinese Odyssey Part Two - Cinderella) which turns to absolute classic now and ever and make Stephen Chow an iconic star as well.The Mandarin voice-over done by Taiwan people is superb so if you are learning mandarin, it's top Mandarin. Originally it's Cantonese.If you like Gongfu movie, this one is a blast. It's fine nice delicate cut between a flying Gong Fu super power guy and gravity still making sense here. It's a blessing in the 90s when computer is not good enough to make all the digital stuff. I personally prefer a stunt man than GC effect, it's real fake, not fake fake.Again, the wind was there and people had no intention for fame and fortune because there is none, they made a laugh and take great joy about what they did - this film.
There are comedies out there that are so out-of-this-world and wild that you would have fun with, but they at least have somewhat of a plot or story that you can follow. This film is such a fantasy mess with childish acting and a script that goes no where that I couldn't find myself to finish it.Never mind that this film features a prominent Hong Kong cinema cast, including Leslie Cheung, Carina Lau, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and Veronica Yip. It's such a nonsensical and dumb movie that you would find even Saturday morning cartoons have more meaning than this.Do yourself a favor and stay away from this movie! There are a lot of better stuff from Hong Kong cinema.Grade F
Fast in pace and rich in adventures, extravagance, color and music, "Eagle Shooting Heroes" adopts the same characters of "Ashes of Time" but, unlike Kar-Wai's epic movie, here they stand on the screen with the sole purpose of entertaining... and they fully succeed!The movie can be roughly divided into 3 parts: in the first part, which takes place over a wide landscape, we get to meet the 9 (!) protagonists one by one, and learn about their quest (it can be love, world domination, revenge or achieving nirvana). Lin Ching Hsia and Chiu-Wai in particular shine and deliver the first ferocious confrontation of the movie, by showing us two terrific kung-fu moves: the "Sea can't be Measured" and the "Toad Shen-Kong".Once we have met all the characters, the second part gathers them together in the enclosed space of an inn, so we see them interact. Hysterically funny is Joey Wang, who may be Leslie Cheung's sweetheart, but apart from that bears very little that can be referred to as sweet. Highly entertaining are also Ka-Fai and Jacky Cheung, who try to win the resistance of their loved ones with their musical talent.Finally, the third part shows the ultimate confrontation. The ending may actually be the only flaw of the movie, and I personally agree with the character interpreted by Leslie Cheung, who at one point states "too ridiculous!".However, apart from the bizarre ending, this is an excellent movie... but be prepared for many surprises! And if you thought the cross-dressing of Ranma and Final Fantasy VII are extreme, be ready to change your rankings, as far as extravagance is concerned! 9/10PS: The DVD (from Ah-Mei) allows selection of Mandarin or Cantonese language (with English/Chinese subtitles burned on the movie), but other than that, no extra feature is included at all.