Asian Movie Review: Princess and the Seven Kungfu Masters (笑功震武林,2013)

Just got back from the HK premiere of "The Princess and the Seven Kungfu Masters", the new Wong Jing comedy.  As the title implies,  this one is centered around martial arts.  It has an all star cast including Sandra Ng, Ronald Cheng, Eric Tsang, Wong Cho Lam, Jo Kuk, Sammo Hung and Philip Ng.  Supporting actors include Dennis To Yuhang and yes, AnD's own Xu Minghu!

As the title implies,  there's a princess (or in this case the daughter of a Warlord) and then seven Kungfu Masters living in a small village:

They keep their martial arts prowess under wraps until a gang of bandits try to pillage their town.  Then they get embroiled in a plot by the Japanese to take out the local warlord.  Much hilarity ensues! :-P

As Sean Tierney likes to point out,  Wong Jing makes a lot of not great movies,  but one of the hallmarks of his long career is the consistancy of his work... you know what to expect and it usually will deliver.  This movie is no exception.  For the most part I am not a fan of these types of cartoonish action comedies (think 'looney toons type physical comedy using copious amounts of CG'),   but between the lame visual gags this one delivers enough solid laughs to make it worth watching. 

Actually if anything I am more picky on the action than the comedy.  Like the comedy this film is a bit of a mixed bag.  Actually the action is quite good in many cases,  although to my eye there's too many close ups and fast cuts which rob you of enjoying the physical action properly.... this may be to mask the fact that most of the main cast (with the exception of Philip Ng) are using stunt doubles for almost everything difficult,  but the film has many talented martial artists (including Tiger Xu Minghu and Jiang Luxia) who do put on some good action sequences. I liked Jiang's whip chain and rope dart fights... of what they showed.   I only wish the director zoomed out a bit more and the editor cut a bit less, so they'd have more of a chance to show off their skills.

That said,  Philip has a very good role as literally the good guy in white: He spends most of his screen time kicking ninjas out of the air...  badass! 

Sandra Ng and Ronald Cheung have some of the best comedy bits,  as you'd expect.  I feel like I'm seeing too much of them together because I just watched 'Hotel Deluxe' like three weeks ago.  I'm not such a big fan of Wong Cho Lam's antics... but the local audience seems to have an affinity for his style of jokes.... 

Anyway,  if you go into this expecting a silly, sometimes dumb, action comedy and you should be pleasantly satisfied.   I'll give it a solid 6/10 if you ignore the CG cartoon stuff!  ;-)