i guess i am a pretty big fan of stephen chow. i think i have seen every one of his movies and before he became a big movie star he was on a couple of TVB television series and i have watched those also. the man is a outright comic genius, in fact one of the best in the world.personally for me, all his movies are watchable and they are never too long( 11/2 hours usually ). this particular movie is a little better than his usual efforts...but like i said, they are all funny.the usual suspects are all here in this movie beside's stephen chow. if you've watched enough hk cinema you'll know what i'm talking about. also in here for a couple of quick cameos is johnny to regular lam suet, he was ridiculously funny. there is also famous television personalities and also the beautiful karen mok in one of her first movies.i've noticed this and that is in everyone of his movies that came out he always has the "hot' or "it" girl at the moment. in this movie it is karen mok. one of the things i liked about the movie besides the endless jokes and gags is that it deals with Chinese cooking and i loved how they showed this in the movie. some of it is real(like using overnight rice to make fry rice)and most of it is not, but a lot is steeped in Chinese cooking legend. the beef balls are actually made that way with the two batons, and the garbage noodles are available in just about every food-stall to this day.the 18 bronze-men of shaolin gag was used twice and both times sidesplitting funny. the ping-pong scene with the beef balls gag is so famous everybody knows of it in hk and china.if you're looking to laugh yourself silly i recommend that you try out this movie. cooking, kung-fu and stephen chow...man, you can't beat that combination.

I loved Shaolin Soccer, and keep hoping to find another Chow film I'll like as well. Some I have liked, some I have not, but nothing beats that one.God of Cookery didn't impress me at all, but it's hard to judge the film fairly, because the English subtitles were inept. I often had no idea what was going on; I think the subtitles must have been made with google translate or something. This makes it hard to offer a definitive view of the movie. I can definitely say it is not as good as Shaolin Soccer, because that movie had stunning, over-the-top visual moments, and this movie - at least the first half, which is all I could take - had little that compared. But with better subtitles, who knows?

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.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. 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!

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.