YMMV / Kung Fu Hustle

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The beggar who sold young Sing his martial arts manual is a huge case of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane. Is he actually some hidden kung fu master, who correctly knew Sing's destiny? Is he just some bum talking out of his ass for money but ended up accidentally correct? Or maybe he's both; genuinely well-versed and a good judge of kung fu prowess but considering he's living in squalor, isn't above asking for money while he's trying to set a kid with potential on the right path?
  • It's worth noting that the Landlady suddenly shifts in behavior once she and her husband out themselves as kung fu masters; she's no longer yelling at everybody and most hints of anger are reduced down to Tranquil Fury. Is this because she's dropping an act? Or is finally falling back to kung fu after years giving her the outlet she's been needing for coping with the despair over her son's death?
  • There is also a high chance that the Landlord is such a skirt-chasing hedonist because he's unhealthily coping with the death of his son.
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: The Landlord and Landlady's reactions to Sing Buddhist Palming an entire side of Pig Sty Alley and leaving a giant hand-shaped hole through it. General Oh, Crap!? Horrified realization that they're gonna have to pay for that? Both?
• Americans Hate Tingle: Not the film itself, but the bizarre Gag Dub it received in Spain, which made the characters speak in very stereotypical Spanish accents (to try to convey the effect of the original, where the actors used several Chinese accents too) and altered their lines at will to insert naff cultural jokes (some of them, to make matters worse, being Totally Radical for the time of the release). Spanish critics and watchers were dismayed alike upon watching the thing, to the point many people reportedly left theaters a few minutes into the movie, and specialized internet forums received cadres of visitors asking whether it was all a bizarre joke or even some kind of sociological experiment. Nowadays, while there are those who appreciate it as a brave decision to adapt the original in a sort of faithful way, most Spaniards consider it rather a grievously failed example of Woolseyism, with some of them seeing it halfheartedly as a case of So Bad, It's Good.
• Awesome Music:
  • The fight with the Musicians versus the Baker and Tailor. This is pretty much the Musician's schtick.
  • The film score got pretty epic for the Three Masters Reveal.
  • The Credits song is pretty awesome too
  • Pick a track, it's hard to go wrong. Realization will make you wince, no matter how many times you watch the movie. "That's a pretty big fist you've got there."
  • Ballroom Blitz
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The random Axe Gang dance number at the beginning. (They're doing the hustle.)
• Crosses the Line Twice: You really don't know whether to laugh or cry at the CGI FX needed to depict Sing's head getting bashed INTO the floor, deeper and deeper each time, over and over...
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Yuen Qiu (Landlady), who earned an award nomination and several roles in later movies.^note She was allegedly just dropping a friend off who was auditioning but the staff thought she would make a great Landlady. Even more amazingly, Yuen Qiu had actually stopped acting for almost two decades prior to this film.
  • The Three Masters also tend to make up quite an impression in audiences due their interesting characters and introductory fight scene, with many viewers lamenting their deaths.
• Fair for Its Day: The Tailor is an effeminate Camp Gay on the receiving end of Queer People Are Funny jokes, typical for early 2000s. That being said, the film mostly drops the jokes when he reveals himself to be a martial artist in the famous battle against the Axe Gang, and while he ultimately falls victim to stronger foes in the second act, it's not to Bury Your Gays, as his fight is treated as badass as the other resident masters before they all meet their doom.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Multiple instances in the attack by the Musicians.
    • They kill off the Coolie quite easily compared to the other two. As the later battle shows, it is very difficult to guard against their attacks without a weapon and his fighting style does not use any.
    • The Musicians always stop when the Landlady opens her window to yell at them. For one it may be because they are professionals and professionals have standards; they won't attack anyone they are not paid to kill. On the other hand, they might have twigged on to the fact that the Landlady is a highly skilled martial artist herself with sonic attacks that could conceivably neutralize their own. They would not want to antagonize her unless it was absolutely necessary. The latter is highly unlikely as they thought that the Lion's Roar is a myth until being on the receiving end of it while being caught off guard by the couple's existence.
    • There is also the first time when the Landlady yells out in complaint of the racket being made outside by the Musicians. The Musicians turn their heads in different directions not just because they are blind, but also because they can't tell where she is yelling from. Being able to misdirect where you really are when your enemy is trying to tell what's your location from the sounds you are making is a sign of a master martial artist.
    • When the Musician makes small talk with the Tailor before trying to kill him, it's possible that the entire conversation beforehand is actually Pre-Battle Banter.
    "You can make a suit in no time." (You were once one of the most elite Kung Fu fighter out there.)
    "We're moving." (That was the past, I'm moving on.)
    "This is good material!" (You can never leave behind who you really are [as a fighter].)
    "You know your stuff." (You seem to know how to fight as well.)
    "This has high artistic value." (But you are still in no where close to my level.)
    "How high?" (Is that so? By how much?)
    "At least a few stories...." (As much as the height of the sky.)
  • When Sing turns on the Axe Gang and begins fighting them, he makes generous use of stomping on his opponents' toes, a move that The Beast derides as a child's technique. Sing received the Buddha's Palm manual and subsequently taught himself martial arts as a child, so naturally as an adult he fights as the hero he dreamed of becoming in his youth.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Meta example. Chow's relationship with long-time collaborator and friend Ng Man-tat (last seen in Shaolin Soccer) soured over this film, allegedly because Chow at the last moment used another actor for the role which was meant for Ng^note Apparently, the role was the Landlord (which went to Yuen Wah) or Bone (which went to Lam Chi-chung). Over the next two decades, the relationship gradually mended, but was never the same again^note There were also counter-claims that the two never collaborated again simply because their schedules were perpetually in conflict, or due to Ng's ill health.. Just before his death in February 2021, Ng even said publicly that he's still open to collaboration with Chow as long as "Stephen's not retired, and I'm not dead".
  • Another meta example was the bad blood between Eva Huang Shengyi (Fong the mute girl) and Stephen Chow's agency after the film was released. In August 2005, Huang unilaterally ended her contract with Chow's company, citing unreasonable demands, exploitation and threats. Both sides sued each other in Hong Kong and China. In March 2007, the Hong Kong court declared that Chow's company had lost the suit. Allegedly, this has nothing to do with Chow himself and Huang says she still respects him.
• Memetic Badass: The Landlady, whose sheer badassery is so well known she's touted by many fans as one of the most badass women in action movie history. If there are any topics about martial art movies, expect her to be brought up a lot.
• Nightmare Fuel: The Coolie's death by beheading, along with the Five-Second Foreshadowing of his fate by an unfortunate cat's shadow falling apart in two pieces as it leaps behind him.
• Signature Scene:
  • The three masters vs. the Axe Gang in Pig Sty alley.
  • Sing's final attack against the Beast and how he easily disarms his An Qi.
• This Is Your Premise on Drugs: What happens with the kung fu flick genre drinks a mixture of Red Bull and Powerthirst.
• Tough Act to Follow: Shaolin Soccer and this film wound up setting the standard for future Stephen Chow films, resulting in much less overall success for them. Look up the view count of various clips on Youtube and compare the numbers. Not helping was the fact that after CJ7, Stephen stopped playing the male lead in his movies.
• Values Dissonance:
  • The Crocodile Gang Leader begging Brother Sum to spare him because of that time he treated him to dinner is seen as a rather barely attempted plea by Western audiences. In China however, footing the bill at restaurants is regarded as being a generous act and shows how you value your relationships with the other person. And thus, Brother Sum hacking the Crocodile Gang to death after their moment of bonding quickly establishes how much of a cruel person he is.
  • In an unrelated and more universal case, some of the Landlady's homophobic slurs thrown at the Tailor have also not aged well (despite the character being overall a pretty decent case of representation).
• Woolseyism: In the original Chinese dub, the characters all have accents from many different regions of the Chinese-speaking area. The famously controversial Spanish dub referred above was an attempt at portraying the same effect as the original.
  • The landlord and landlady speak with Southern Chinese accents, which were dubbed as Andalusian (Southern Spain).
  • Sing speaks like a tough boy from the city, and was dubbed as a bit of a Madrid "chulo".
  • His friend Bone speaks with an East coast/Shanghai accent, which was dubbed as Catalan (Mediterranean coast).
  • The peasant woman who hits Sing hard in Pigsty Alley says her line with a rural Northwest Chinese accent, thus it was dubbed as Galician (Northwest Spain, and very rural).
  • The musical assassins speak with accents of the Far North, thus they were dubbed with French accents (technically north of Spain).
  • The Beast speaks with a Taiwan accent, thus he was dubbed with an Italian accent (east, and across the sea from Spain there is Italy).

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