God of Cookery (Shi Shen)

Released 1996
Stars Stephen Chow, Vincent Kok, Ng Man-Tat, Karen Mok
Directed by Lik Chi Li

I don't remember adding this movie to my netflix queue, and I have no idea where I heard of it. It's a Hong Kong flick that combines martial arts with the t.v. show, "The Iron Chef." It's pretty damn funny and frequently goes over the top, but it was a little too mean-spirited for me. The humor is always at the expense of someone, and the worst treatment is of Turkey (Karen Mok). I don't want to give away the ending, but did she need a bullet in the head for the God of Cookery (Stephen Chow) to have a change of heart? Still, there are a lot of fun scenes, like those with the 18 men of brass and the cooking competitions.

The one thing to beware of is the subtitling, which is the worst I've seen. The translator had trouble with his English, but it's not difficult to figure out what they meant to say. It is difficult to read them at times, because they zip by pretty quickly. The worst thing, though, is they don't translate any newspaper headlines or signs. It's funny, because they have closeups of these things with no translation. I could pretty much guess at what they were saying, but come on, guys.

Summary by Bill Alward