Message from rramirez

[Anonymous]

Hopefully I don't get any flak over this movie review. I am reviewing the old "Drunken Master" (I think it's from 1979 or 1980. While this is a Jackie Chan kung-fu comedy, it is interesting that a lot of things discussed in our sessions, were present in the movie.
On Saturday the 15th for example, one of the lecturers (Prof. Pietlka I believe) mentioned how in some Asian movies there was an older woman who was powerful or did whatever she wanted. This is true in Drunken Master. In one scene of the movie, the protagonist, Freddy Wong (played by Jackie Chan), decides to go and flirt with a girl in the market. He goes on to try to hug and kiss her against her will. The girl is shocked, but all she does is whine. Moments later, her mother steps in. She confronts Freddy, Freddy calls her an indecent name. The mother of the girl goes on to whoop Freddy with some fine kung-fu moves. Onlookers begin to comment "Oh man the old *@&^$ is tough!"
Later on this same character is one who gives wise advice to Freddy's father who is just about to kill his sexual predator son Freddy for the market incident. Freddy's father was about to beat him to death, but the woman interceded (very kindly and not in the form of a challenge) and helped spare Freddy's life.
There is also a lot of Confucian influence in the way that characters roles develop in the movie. In one scene, Freddy runs away from home because his father sent him to train with a hard core kung-fu teacher. He runs across an assasin's hideout. The assasin tells Freddy to split, Freddy refuses, a fight breaks out. Freddy gets his butt kicked (bad). To make matters worse, the assasin tells Freddy that the kung-fu his father taught him was lousy (not in those words) and that perhaps he (Freddy) out to call him (the assasin) father. This drives Freddy off the wall. Because his father had been insulted, he continues to fight even though he had gotten beat bad by the assassin. I have never seen something like this happen in any Latin American, European or American movie. The closest I have seen to this was the infamous "What'd you say about my Momma?!" scene in Menace II Society.
Anyway, if you absolutely hate kung-fu movies or Jackie Chan, then avoid this movie. However, if you can tolerate both or like both and want to laugh hysterically, this is by far one of the funniest movies I have seen. I let my mom borrow it and she was laughing so loud even though she watched the Mandarin version (the DVD only has English, Mandarin and something else- no Spanish- she figured she couldn't understand the English anyway, so Mandarin was good enough for her). If you watch it and you hate it, you can blame my easy amusement on my genes. Last thing, they actually cuss in this movie so be warned.