The God of Cookery, a brilliant chef who sits in judgement of those who would challenge his title, loses his title when a jealous chef reveals him to be a con-man and humiliates him publicly. As this new chef takes on the God of Cookery's role, the former God tries to pull himself back on top again, to challenge his rival and find once and for all who is the true God of Cookery. The most renowned and feared chef in the world loses his title of God of Cookery because of his pompous attitude. Humbled, he sets out to reclaim his title. Despite the recent increase in popularity of Asian film in the united states, what with the introduction of Jet Li and Jackie Chan to mainstream audiences, it seems that only the dedicated few are aquainted with the works of Stephen Chao. This particular film is quite possibly the best of his work so far, with its quick pace, hillarious sight gags and kungfu movie allusions. The overall style of the piece is very appealing and will not fail to delight even people who generally dislike foreign film. For best viewing, i prefer the DVD edition.. the subtitles are clearly ledgible, and fairly accurate to the cantonese dialogue. I wish an American distributor had picked up this over-the-top Hong Kong comedy, because it may have helped to break down the unfortunate fact that Americans for the most part are still pretty closed to foreign films. Granted, it's far from a conventional comedy, and not easy for advertising to sum up, but I think this could have been at the very least a sleeper hit on these shores had a distributor patiently opened this across the country.<br/><br/>But you should be able to find this in any good Asian movie rental place in your city. You don't have to worry about any cultural differences - much of the humor is of the international slapstick variety, and even some of the cultural references (like Shaolin kung fu) will be understandable. Now there are some kinds of humor that even had me (who's seen much more of Asian cinema than the average humor) mystified, but there was still a wacky edge to them that made them amusing, even if I didn't know exactly what they were referring to. <br/><br/>The movie is a non-stop barrage of laughs. It does get exhausting at times, and the movie starts to get really sloppy towards the end (the final scene felt very unfinished), but you'll still find much more to enjoy here than in your average American comedy. Even if you end up hating it, you won't be able to deny that you've seen NOTHING like this before!
Danysenric replied
295 weeks ago