Gong fu chu shen

KUNG FU CHEFS (2009) brings to mind such Hong Kong cooking movies as Tsui Hark's Chinese FEAST (1995) and Stephen Chow's GOD OF COOKERY (1996), but is considerably lower-budgeted. This one incorporates kung fu fight scenes, thanks to a contrived subplot involving decades-old sibling rivalry and a nephew's urge for revenge. The fight scenes are well-staged (by two of the venerable Yuen Clan, Yuen Cheung-Yan and Yuen Shun Yi) and give veteran kung fu star Sammo Hung a chance to show he can still strut his stuff after forty years in the business, but they interfere with the cooking scenes which are the real reason to see this movie. As master chef Wong Ping-Yee, Sammo whips up quite a few mouth-watering dishes. My favorite is the scene in which he makes scrambled eggs in a fashion I wish my local diner would adopt.

The real reason I sought this movie out is the presence in the cast of Ai Kago, a Japanese pop singer known to her fans by her nickname, Aibon, and famous for being one of the legendary 4th Generation of J-pop girl group Morning Musume and, later, half of a charming duo called W, in which Aibon was paired with her equally delightful 4th Gen partner, Nozomi Tsuji (better known as Nono). In KUNG FU CHEFS, Kago is fourth-billed as Ying, the sister of the female owner of the Cantonese restaurant that becomes the focal point of the movie after unemployed master chef Sammo signs on as the head cook after beating the current chef in a one-on-one cooking competition. Kago is the one who gets to sample the competing dishes of roast duck in that scene and it reminded me of all those great bits on Morning Musume's old TV show, "Hello Morning," in which the girls got to eat special dishes provided by local Tokyo restaurants. Unfortunately, she doesn't get to eat much more than that in the course of the film. She has one food preparation scene in which Sammo coaches her in making a sauce. She participates in one fight scene staged in a supermarket and gets to do a lot of her own fight moves, although she's doubled in the more acrobatic bits. She becomes something of a love interest, although quite chaste, for Ken (Vanness Wu), the young hero, a wandering cook/kung fu expert who winds up as Sammo's assistant at the restaurant.

I enjoyed watching Kago, who evidently was instructed by the director to just "be yourself" in every scene she's in, even though, ultimately, she doesn't get to do as much as I'd like. I hope other enterprising casting directors will succumb to her charms. She's cute, spunky, full of life and vigor, and utterly adorable, even if we're denied the pleasure of listening to her own voice. Word of advice to those with the bilingual (Mandarin/Cantonese) DVD: choose Mandarin since the voice actress on that track sounds more like Kago than the one on the Cantonese track.

KUNG FU CHEFS recalls another action film that employed J-pop stars from Hello! Project. Three years ago, the Japanese film, SUKEBAN DEKA: CODENAME - SAKI ASAMIYA (2006), released in the U.S. as YO YO GIRL COP, starred H!P solo star Aya Matsuura in the title role, with Rika Ishikawa, another 4th Gen member of Morning Musume, as her chief rival. Their presence enhanced that film significantly as well.

Right, well given my love of the Asian cinema, then of course I would watch the 2009 movie "Gong Fu Chu Shen" (aka "Kung Fu Chefs"), as I had the opportunity to do so here in 2025. Sure, I had never even heard about the movie prior to sitting down to watch it, so I only know whatever little about the movie as was provided by the synopsis on the back of the movie's cover. But I figured that a movie with Sammo Kam-Bo Hung in the leading role couldn't be all bad.

Come 45 minutes, very prolonged minutes I might add, into the movie, and I tossed the towel in the ring, giving up on the movie out of sheer and utter boredom and lack of interest in the narrative. This movie was about cooking, and not so much a martial arts comedy, as I was lead to believe. I am a bit impressed that writers Cyrus Cheng, Eddie Chu, Simon Liu, Po Wang and Joey Yuen collectively could muster to put together something an boring as what "Gong Fu Chu Shen" turned out to be.

There were some familiar faces on the cast list, aside from Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, the movie also had Xing Yu, Tze-Chung Lam, Louis Fannd Siu-Lung Leung on the cast list. The acting performances in the movie were fair, despite the fact that the storyline and narrative utterly failed to entertain me.

In the 45 minutes of prolonged boredom that I sat through, there were a couple of fight scenes, and they were nicely choreographed and executed, but it was nowhere sufficient to make up for a major lack in storyline.

This is not a movie that I will ever return to attempt finish watching.

My rating of director Wing-Kin Yip's 2009 movie "Gong Fu Chu Shen" lands on a generous three out of ten stars.

Well, if you like kung-fu and food, this movie would obviously be for you... But you'd first have to get past a really simple plot, some really bad acting, and worse of all, a post prod voice recording! That how kung-fu movies were done like years ago, but come on, it's 2009! I only watch subbed movies, and here I felt like watching a really badly dubbed movie (you can easily notice the bad lip sync).

I watched this movie back in 2013 on television and 2 or 3 times since then and I must say, The more I watch this movie the more things I discover wrong in it The made-up cooking techniques and Sammo seemd to be enough of a draw for audiences at the time but that it seems the producers thought that too as they seemed to have put no effort in the script, characters or character interrelationships The directing seemed amateurish at best and though the actors seemed perfectly competent and had chemistry with each other they were evidently stuck with a studio and director that seems to have watched "God Of Cookery" (A film made way before this one and incorporated culunary and kung fu themes in a manner far superior) once and said "Yeah, Let's just make that sort of movie" The movie's message seems to be that of family and simplicity which fortunately comes across in the movie . Some might say this is a typical turn off your brain flick but the movie's confusing continuity and pacing prevents you from doing so and in retrospect it's not surprising that the 1st watch was undoubtedly the best one Atleast it's not "Cook up a storm"

People may be annoyed with the fight scenes in between, it was annoying yes but what remained with me was that making of dishes with a beautiful voice over explaining the significance of the method used. Visuals were good, food was treated with utmost respect and everything about the food part was poetic.

Last sequence about cabbage soup and purity was captivating.