Drunken Monkey was directed by kung fu maestro, Lau Kar Leung, and presented by the Shaw Brothers Studio. Of course, this movie had some pretty big shoes to fill. And Drunken Monkey only partially lives up to the studio's/director’s reputation. As an old school kung fu movie, the fighting is still awesome. A lot of it is contrived and unrealistic, but it’s still extremely impressive and exciting. Most of the fights in this movie are very short, but the training scenes and finale at the end are especially exciting.
And just like an old school kung fu movie, the acting is very overstated and the humor is sometimes more strange than it is funny. This movie really goes to show how dated Lau Kar-Leung’s style can be. Of course, for kung fu movie fans, his style is fantastic, but it doesn’t work as well nowadays. If only there were more charismatic actors, this movie probably would’ve been much more entertaining. Besides Lau Kar-Leung, Gordon Liu, and Chi Kuan-Chun, there many aren’t other other notable Shaw veterans that star in this movie. Though I thought Wu Jing was really fantastic in this movie, I could easily see someone being irritated by the overacting.
Images from HKMDb and HK Cinemagic