Crazy Acrobat Film Review

A dreaded kung fu comedy. You know where you are in the opening scene when one of the two main characters falls off his bike, rolls down a hill into a mass of gooey goose shit. Tries to stand up and falls again and rips his pants open. Yikes. Save me. But on the other hand, you don't get to watch Chia Ling aka Judy Lee doing comedy very often. Even bad comedy. She was better known as one of Taiwan's top female action stars and one that rarely played for fun. In her most famous film, The Queen Boxer, she practically kills the entire cast. Here she is mainly all smiles and giggles. Even when she is beating the hell out of the Keystone minions. Bam. Laugh. Bang. Giggle. Lots of slapstick. But if you are a Chia Ling fan as I am, it is generally painless.

She and her friend Wei Tzu-yun are basically nitwits always getting into some mess and unable to keep a job. Both orphans, they are buddies. Chia Ling with her short hair and drab gray apparel looks like a young man and I wasn't really sure for most of the film if she was playing a man. After Wei falls into the goose shit, they go into a warehouse for him to clean up and sew up his pants. They witness a murder by the town badnik (Henry Lu Yi-lung) and his gang. He runs the local brothel. The two of them are spotted and the action begins.

They escape into a rundown house and when the gang shows up they make the house seem haunted. Everywhere they go, they are chased after and a goofy fight ensues. Chia still gets to show her skills though. She clocks everyone, big or small; hairy chested or not. They end up living with a troupe of entertainers, but when the villain kidnaps five of the women for his brothel, Chia has to dress up as a wannabe prostitute and save the girls. But even then, it never gets as serious as one might want. I prefer the Queen Boxer side of her. This seems to be a remake of Back Alley Princess that came out the year before in Hong Kong starring Polly Shang-kuan, Sam Hui and Angela Mao. A much better film.