Customer Reviews for
Enter the Fat Dragon
a bumpkin's best Bruce Lee
This movie is simultaneously a tribute to Bruce Lee, and a scathing indictment of "Bruceploitation" flicks. Director Sammo Hung plays a pig farmer, obsessed with Bruce Lee, who goes to the big city to help his uncle run a tiny outdoor restaurant. He immediately gets into trouble, helping out a co-worker with some thugs. Things pretty much just escalate from there. The more Sammo tries to lend a hand to the folks around him, the more things go crazy. I'm reminded of the irony in the mid-90's cartoon "Eek the Cat", whose main character's slogan, "it never hurts to help" always did.
The fights are a lot of fun and occur frequently. Sammo does his best to imitate the movements, noises, and facial expressions of Lee rather humorously, and without insulting his memory. This flick is full of comedy, and while most of it's not hilarious, it's not painful either. You likely won't crack-up, but you may just crack a smile. Lee Hoi San, doing his best "Al Jolson" in a giant afro, should produce a chuckle if you're not offended by it. You certainly shouldn't be.
Crash Cinema's DVD is nicely widescreened with decent picture quality, but has no dub, and subtitles that blend in with the background about 30% of the time. Honestly, it's not really that big of a deal. This movie is easy enough to follow. Some extras would've been nice, but I'm just happy to have finally seen it. The rating is up for debate. It's probably more along the lines of a 3.5, but this is one that I'd likely watch repeatedly, so "4" it is. I may even go so far as to say that Sammo Hung does a better Bruce Lee than anyone else, right down to the nunchaku. Recommended.
1978Enter the Fat Dragon
Sammo Hung, the best of the Bruce Lee imitators
Sammo Hung is amazing in this movie. The way he combines Bruce Lee's acting and fighting style with his own style is such a joy to watch. There's not much of a story here. Peter Yang plays a really weird guy who kidnaps a girl and Sammo has to save her. But Peter Yang has 3 tough fighters who Sammo needs to defeat in order to save th girl. Doesn't sound like much of a movie does it? Well, it's not. But the fighting is great and I don't ask for much more than that. Sammo uses a modern type fighting style the whole movie, and I love how he saves the only classic kung fu type fight for the finale. The comedy is decent at times, but the fights are what make this movie worth watching. It's a must see for Sammo fans. And not only is there Bruce Lee imitating going on, but also Jim Kelly. But couldn't they have found a black actor to play the Jim Kelly clone? What was Sammo thinking?
3.5/5
The picture quality on the Crash DVD is decent. Widescreen with subtitles that are readable about 80% of the time.Enter the Fat Dragon
Enter The Fat Dragon is worth it's weight(GROAN) in fun!
Indeed a guilty pleasure! One of Sammo's greatest(and unjustly forgotten) films, Enter The Fat Dragon stars Hung as a pig farmer obsessed with his "hero" Bruce Lee and who spends most of his time getting into trouble and hamming it up(get it? Pig farmer... ham? Sorry, that's the last one I promise) while doing it. Rarely has Sammo been able to balance action with comedy so flawlessly. Don't get me wrong, I'm an enormous Sammo(get it? Enormous... Sammo? He's fat people, and THAT is the last one... I hope) fan but... we all know that he nearly always brings great action, but his comedy? It doesn't always work so well, I mean there have been moments in his other movies but nothing like this, which plays out ridiculous scenario one right after the other that actually provide laughs... and when all else fails, he resorts to mimicking Bruce Lee in uncanny and amusing fashion(sure to induce smiles EVERYtime). Now obviously my 5 star rating will be more than a little skewed for most. I mean, can the movie really stack up to other so-called cinematic "classics" such as ET, The Godfather, or Citizen Kane? The answer is "hell yes!" Well, for fans of Kung Fu and Sammo Hung at least... Sammo using Jeet Kune Do on a herd of unruly swine, Hoi San Lee(36th Chamber Of Shaolin, Last Hurrah For Chivalry, Twin Warriors) painted black and sporting an afro and puffy purple shirt as an African American fighter(not the most PC thing ever... but bizarre and must-see to be sure), and my personal favorite scene featuring Sammo breaking up the filming of a Bruceploitation film by taking on the main imitator and his entire entourage(in a matchup featuring plenty of Lee's trademark howls and posturing). This film comes highly recommended for fans of classic martial arts mayhem or even those with any passing interest in this films star OR the man he obviously greatly admired. As for the DVD from Crash Masters? It's complete garbage unfortunately, with an awful print of the film and subtitles that are so small and light in color that they become near illegible oftentimes(and even when you can see them, they rarely read right... like the word "is" whenever "have" should be used), also no dubbed track is available here either. An extremely poor, bare-bones release for a film worthy of far more... hopefully someday it will get the release, and viewing public, that it rightly deserves.Enter the Fat Dragon
A Treasure For Fans
I never thought it would work but Sammo Hung does a fantastic Bruce Lee imitation in this film. But not of the lame parody kind. He really does move fast and performs many of the techniques and mannerisms of the man himself. Not only that, he does a lot of other fighting styles as well. The goofy comedy is great too. This is one of the few unique kind of movies that is fun to watch and not take too seriously.Enter the Fat Dragon
Terrible . . .
Terribly charming, that is. Sammo Hung portrays a starstruck Bruce Lee fan, imitating him down to the haircut and monkey-like shrieks. Otherwise a simple-minded man, he displays throughout the movie Bruce Lee-like fighting prowess which, coming from a man his size, is hilarious to behold. The storyline is crap, there's no two ways about it, but the content is what makes it great. The various stupid moments (Sammo trying to buy sunglasses that look like a Bruce Lee picture, the millionaire's "revenge" daydreams, any time Sammo goes into Bruce Lee mode, the terrible english, the Black-faced Asian) are incredibly corny and fun to watch.
Not only that, but the action scenes are actually decent. Normally I hate watching Bruce Lee's fight scenes, finding them FAR too contrived and silly, but Sammo manages to pull it off quite well. Maybe it's his funny and intense charisma, I don't know. Not only that, but Sammo even chooses to integrate some traditional Kung Fu fight scenes in the movie, bringing its worth in my eyes way up.
The movie harkens back to the days when heros were idealized and worshipped, something severely lacking in today's society, with the dirt sheets and Hollywood scandals appearing everywhere. Chuck Norris did a similar theme with Sidekicks, and ideal heros, unfortunately, has become a dying breed of people. Something that endears the movie to me is that there's little swearing and the violence is surprisingly non-violent. Sure there are kung fu punches and kicks and the like, but the reactions are always almost Loony Toon-ish in their reaction, the victims having huge and goofy-looking sores where they were hit. And other than a single sex joke at the beginning of the movie, it's surprisingly clean, resorting to slapstick and farce for it's humor.
So why am I giving it only three stars? Firstly, the movie quality is terrible in every aspect. It's easily seen that there was no budget for the movie (blackfaced Asian? What the hell?), although that definitely added to the campy silliness. Secondly, the video quality is horrible. The DVD claims to have it remastered, but it's incredibly grainy and looks antiquated, with even some marker markings showing up in some stills. The subtitles, as well, are pale and fuzzy white, making them really hard to see a lot of the time. Thank god the movie's plot is unimportant.Enter the Fat Dragon
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