The Chinese Feast (1995)

Starring: Anita Yuen, Kenny Bee

Director: Tsui Hark

Category: Foreign Language & International

Format: widescreen, More

Language: Cantonese

Subtitles: English

Rated NR: Not Rated. This movie has not been rated by the MPAA.

"Food and fisticuffs meet in a dazzling exhibition of "cook fu" when rival chefs compete in an acrobatic display, turning ordinary dishes such as beef chow fun and sweet and sour pork into culinary masterpieces. The film culminates in a 3-day cooking contest to re-create the majestic Qing Han Imperial Feast, a banquet held in the 17th century to unite a divided China."

I've never been a fan of slapstick or physical comedies, movies with outrageous plots, mistaken identity or zany hijinks do nothing for me, except annoy. I never "got" "The Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello irritated me, (slapping, poking and hitting people isn't funny to me, sorry). Jerry Lewis films never did anything for me and even present day Jim Carrey movies, (a man who irritates my eardrums far less than Jerry Lewis) do nothing but bore me. So you can see, my patience for this type of movie is pretty much non existent, and so I was all ready to give this film a bad review when a recent email stopped me in my tracks.

The email came from a delightful person who reads this site, AND is also a fan of the cooking movie genre. Jojo recommended a few movies to me, one of the suggestions was a movie called "God of Cookery (Hong Kong, 1996)" and Jojo wrote :

"Okay, this one I'm suggesting because I find it a lot of fun. However, I'm from Hong Kong and I'm not sure if some of the humour translates terribly well if you're not familiar with Hong Kong films and culture. It's a good mindless immature movie about cooking."

That got me thinking, did I dislike this movie because I don't like movies like this OR, could it be because I don't understand the culture? I think the answer is, a little bit of both. So how can I write a fair review of the movie when I don't understand it? I don’t want to write things like “this movie sucked” and “what were they thinking” when I never finished watching the movie, I never even gave it a fair chance. I now understand that not understanding the culture as well as not being a fan of this genre made me think this was a waste of my time. I have since found this review and this review very helpful in trying to understand what I was watching, so much so that I'll re-rent this somewhere down the line and give it another chance. I will say one negative thing though, and this has nothing to do with the actual movie really. The copy of the movie I had was terrible, it looked almost like a bootleg version, dark and grainy with sub-titles that were tiny and impossible to read, a better copy would greatly improve my ability to sit through this a second time, hopefully Netflix will resolve that.

OH! I almost forgot, today is the 2nd anniversary of this website! YAY MurrayHill5!

Written by Deb on February 24, 2004 11:24 AM