I bought this DVD from HKFlix on the basis of a promising blurb and with near zero experience with HK or Chinese films. Minutes into the film, I was facing that old "if lions could speak English, we wouldn't understand them" phenomenon. Obviously, if a lion produced a film parodying his pride's identity crises, it too might be full of visually exciting gesture and roaring and absurd humor, but it'd be tough to grasp any elements of keen significance hidden in the lion slapstick and puns and ironic inside jokes.
Still, in forcing the uninitiated viewer to think fast - to figure out what heck's behind the near comic-book style parody - this film is in a sense strongly interactive. It's also quite exhilaratingly unique, a bit in the mold of The Tin Drum (Blechtrommel) - and with an oblique touch of the slacker view on life - but from a different age and place.
I'm eager to get my hands on Golden Chicken #1. It's encouraging to find films with such youthful voice, such daring to depart from the banal - with none of the brainless violence I associate with HK flicks - and with such thought-provoking presentation.
By the way, I viewed this film in Mandarin - I had to choose between three Chinese options - and that was a mistake. The dubbing wasn't great. But of course I didn't understand word of it, anyway.
I know it's futile to say this, but I have a young, but growing stack of Zone 3 (mostly Japanese) films by one old computer, a taller stack of Zone 2's by another, and I sometimes have difficulty finding something to view a Zone 1 with...
One thing, at least - I can't imagine Richard Gere or Julia Roberts in a remake of Golden Chicken - though I mustn't put anything past our Hollywood turkeys.
