Drunken Tai Chi (1984)

I love this movie so much

Beautiful, moving film.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

DRUNKEN TAI CHI is FAR less funny than many (any?) of the Old School Kung Fu Comedies that preceded it. One can't just say "F--- physics" and call it Funny; STUPID is what it is. (And, yes, there IS a difference between Funny and Stupid; a sometimes subtle difference that apparently not a lot of Filmmakers understand...) In this one, it's a baby-faced Donnie Chen who dangles endlessly from the harnesses during some terminally interminable scenes. (It's nigh impossible to tell if Chen was ever really any good at the whole Kung Fu thing: he spent so much time swinging from wires and being "enhanced" by cg that an accurate assessment just isn't possible.) And loads of pyrotechnics don't help- not one bit. Take from the equation what makes these movies truly unique- the Human Element, honed to a razor's edge- and what's left isn't worth watching. Wireless was better.

One of donnie yens first. It is pretty funny, the obligatory training sequence is well done and the fight scenes are pretty decent. Its one of the last of the Shaw Brothers style films. No wire work and the like.If you really need a reason to see this film check out the practice scene, set to 'Love is the drug' by Roxy music. Very funny.

Donnie Yen's first movie with Yuen Wo Ping. RE: similarities between this film and DRUNKEN MASTER -- there is so much crossover between their casts and crews, and HK filmmaking in general was so homogenous at the time, I find any similarities not only forgivable, but forgettable.Donnie wasn't much of an actor at the time, but his performance is bolstered by a supporting cast which includes two of Yuen Wo Ping's brothers: Sunny Yuen as the villain, Killer Bird, and Yuen Cheung Yan as the Master. I have a lot of affection for both actors. You might remember Yuen Cheung Yan as Jet Li's mentor in TAI CHI MASTER, or as police Captain Jie in FIST OF LEGEND. Sunny Yuen played a similar villain in DREADNAUGHT opposite Yuen Biao, the brave-but-bumbling Chief Fox in IRON MONKEY, the protagonist Shang in BUDDHIST FIST... and if you look closely you'll notice him getting clobbered by Hwang Jang Lee in the opening battle of DRUNKEN MASTER.Anything Donnie lacked in the acting department was more than made up for by his martial arts skills. DRUNKEN TAI CHI is an enjoyable first look at a promising new action star.

Look up 'Shameless ripoff' in the dictionary, and you'll find a picture of Donnie Yen practising tai chi. The startlingly original plot -- our hero gets beaten up and sees his family killed, forcing him to learn a new style of martial arts so he can defeat the evil killer -- is enhanced by... well, okay. Not enhanced. But there are a few slight variations from tradition in an effort to give this film some semblance of a plot, such as the evil baddie being a loving daddy. But let us gloss over such trivia as plot --as did the director -- in favour of the characters and the kung-fu, the two essential ingredients in any movie of this type. Plot? Pah!Anyway, the Sam the Seed character is a drunken tai chi master (that's a master of tai chi who's drunken, not a master of drunken tai chi. If you you were expecting differently from the film's title, tough). There are no amusing styles, and the tai chi bears as much resemblance to the actual art as does real-life kung fu to its cinematic equivalent. Do I sound like I didn't like the film? I hope not, because I *did* enjoy it, while recognising that it hadn't a shred of originality or thought behind it. Most of the fight scenes were good fun, and the bits in between, while unfunny, weren't as painfully so as they usually are in this sort of film. Yuen Woo Ping's reputation was made by Drunken Master, and this film was his most obvious attempt to cash in. I'm inclined to blame the studio more than the director for this though; not that blame particularly needs to be apportioned. You won't come away from this film thinking it was a masterpiece, but you won't be grumbling and demanding your money back either.