Kung Fu Hustle. The film is just as its title sounds. It’s kung fu action. It’s dancing. It’s passionately whimsical.

I must admit upfront that I feel I’m missing a great deal in my lack of familiarity with the tradition of kung fu movies. Hustle appears to be a send-up, but I wasn’t always sure what exactly was being sent-up. Kung Fu Hustle comes across to me as a sort of Mel Brooks take on the likes of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero.

There isn’t much to Kung Fu Hustle but spectacle, but oh, what a spectacle that is. Violence hasn’t been this aesthetically pleasing or as entertaining since Kill Bill. When the axe gang comes to fight ravage a small village to wreck havoc, they suddenly discover there’s more to the simple town than they had bargained for. The landlady can blow down opponents with her lion roar, the gay tailor can fight like a master, and so the gang must recruit musicians who fling musical daggers. The whole thing is as close to a real life cartoon I’ve ever seen.

While Kung Fu Hustle is playing with the conventions of the genre, it doesn’t back down in performance. Many of the visual effects and action scenes rival those of House of Flying Daggers and comparable efforts. There is nary is single moment that you can take your eyes off the screen.

While wholly engrossing visually, Hustle falls short with its script. Humorous moments abound, but there are just as many jokes that fall flat. It seems as if it's taking its cartoonish influences too far – a great deal of the humor is cartoonish in nature. The constantly adolescent antics quickly become tiresome.

While I fully admit the story probably was, on a number of levels, satirical of traditional kung fu movies, it offered nothing particularly engaging in itself. For its own part, I sensed nothing more than a set of sequences that provided for the most visual chicanery and buffoonery. But it's still worth it. This is one circus that’s worth the price of admission; it’s a heck of show.

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