LOADING
Directed by John Woo | 101 minutes | 15+ | Country: Hong Kong, Taiwan | Language: Cantonese (English Subtitles) | Year: 1980
13:00 | Saturday, October 25 | static vision HQ
Buy Tickets ($12.50/$10) | Buy Day Pass ($35/$30)
THE CHINESE CHARLIE CHAPLIN
Dean Shek look and walks like The Tramp, but he’s not exactly a gentleman in John Woo’s Charlie Chaplinsploitation movie that homages the silent comedy master with inimitable Hong Kong stuntwork and unashamed lowbrow jokes. You will see a man fart on a shrub to flush out a chicken dinner. You will see a drunk man go gorilla mode after a hard head-bopping.
Like Chaplin’s golden comedies, LAUGHING TIMES deeply empathises with the downtrodden. Shek’s Tramp, his kid companion, and his love are stuck in the muck of poverty. The tears and grins flow from their righteous attempts to escape the bounds of hunger and prison. It may hurt when you belly laugh at the gallows humour, and but you will (probably) keep laughing nonetheless because the energy never flags. Watch out for the action climax that smashes 20s and 80s style together for an extended slapstick brawl that makes Jerry Lewis look restrained in comparison.
SIMILAR: The Kid (1921), Wheels on Meals, The Ladies Man (1961), The Naked Gun