Stephen Chow is arguably the most important and distinctive actor and director of the 1990s and 2000s cinema of Hong Kong comedy, with an indigenous moleitau style, mass local audiences and also international acclaim. Whereas the belated success of A Chinese Odyssey (1995) in China makes him widely recognized as a cultural icon with a personal myth holding sway in a bigger China film culture, he is better known, probably, to the first time transnational audience as the actor and director of the worldwide hit Shaolin Soccer (2001). Kung Fu Hustle (2004) is another box-office success of his. After a local moleitau craze in the 1990s in particular, the 2000s transnational trajectory emphasizes physical humor and spatial relationships calling into question the notion of space for Ho...[ Read more ]

Stephen Chow is arguably the most important and distinctive actor and director of the 1990s and 2000s cinema of Hong Kong comedy, with an indigenous moleitau style, mass local audiences and also international acclaim. Whereas the belated success of A Chinese Odyssey (1995) in China makes him widely recognized as a cultural icon with a personal myth holding sway in a bigger China film culture, he is better known, probably, to the first time transnational audience as the actor and director of the worldwide hit Shaolin Soccer (2001). Kung Fu Hustle (2004) is another box-office success of his. After a local moleitau craze in the 1990s in particular, the 2000s transnational trajectory emphasizes physical humor and spatial relationships calling into question the notion of space for Hong Kong discourse and politics. Hong Kong comedy is foregrounded on a cultural plane by Stephen Chow. This is a culturally and historically based analysis of a comic cinema, farcically inept and having an obvious vulgarity in the comedy movies but conversely discerned to be of abundant cultural significance by both critics and audience. A study of the comic work encounters issues of style, tradition, mainstream, and pop culture. Ludicrous cinema challenges viewers to rethink the nonsensicality of nonsense, superficial plausibility of pop culture, and cultural specificity in the age of modernity.