Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Braised Elephant Trunk With Honey: Excellent!, September 5, 2005
The young man is determined to become a skilled practitioner in this Chinese film, but he must first learn from a master, an older man who has sunk low. Yet the master still retains his abilities. The question: Can the master bring himself back up, train the young man and lead a team of courageous followers to final victory in an explosive show-down against a team of arrogant professionals?
Well, sure. But be sure you've eaten before you see this movie because it's about cooking, not kung fu. If you like Chinese food, your stomach will be rumbling half-way through the film. The movie is part slapstick, part screwball comedy, part Iron Chef..and it's all about Chinese cookery. You might not think elephant trunk sounds appetizing, but, I'll tell you, it's looks good on a plate.
Chui Kong Sun (Leslie Cheung) is determined to become a chef. He's something of a wise guy, brash but basically well-intentioned. He gets a job in a restaurant under false pretenses and almost immediately finds himself in a wrestling match with a 200 pound live fish. He and the fish go thrashing from the kitchen into the dining room, and along the way he encounters the restaurant owner's daughter, Au Ka Wai (Anita Yuen), who looks a little like Cyndi Lauper. You can spot her in a crowd by her bright red hair and green lipstick.
After several adventures in cooking, Sun and Wai find themselves in a desperate search to find Liu Kit (Kenny Bee), a disgraced master chef. Only Kit can rescue Wai's father from a challenge made by a notorious master chef backed up by an unscrupulous group of gangsters. The challenge is simple: The two chefs will compete in preparing the Qing Han Imperial Feast, comprising of a different main course a day over three days together with 15 other dishes. The first day will be bear palm; the second day, elephant trunk; and the third day, monkey brains. Whoever wins, wins everything. I'll let you try to decide if the good guys win, but I'll tell you that Leslie Cheung and Anita Yuen make an attractive and funny couple, and that Kenny Bee is a confident master chef once his taste buds and sense of smell are whipped back into shape.
And what dishes to watch being prepared: Fried noodles with beef, sweet and sour pork (not at all like the chewy pork chunks with fluorescent red candy sauce most of us are familiar with), fish stuffed with soup and pearl-stuffed dumplings. And then there are the main courses for the Qing Han Feast: Polar bear palm, deboned and steamed with caviar in golden sturgeon soup, then served chilled with pears carved into flowers; Northern Chinese bear palm braised with honey and swallows' livers; Thai elephant trunk steamed, braised and then stewed with wild birds; boiled elephant trunk frozen, covered with yogurt and aged for half a month, then cut into soft slices and simmered with ginseng and chicken; shark fin threads fried with shark teeth power with monkey brains gently tossed in briefly so that they stay soft, moist and whole.
If you like other first-rate food movies such as Big Night, Tampopo, Babette's Feast and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, you should enjoy this one. Be prepared for two things: The English subtitles were written by someone who may not have had the greatest command of the English language, and the subtitles are white with no dark edging; they can't be read when the background is light. The DVD is bare bones. All the instructions are in Chinese but the film is set up to start playing with the subtitles. Don't be discouraged. The movie really is a great deal of fun.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the all time best movies about food, November 2, 2000
By A Customer
The Chinese Feast is one of the all time best movies about food and a great movie in its own right. One of the main plots involves rehabilitating an alchohlic master chef to save a restaurant. It reminded me of the classic western plot of bringing back the old gunfighter to save the ranch. Western audiences will find this movie quite accessible. The comic timing is extraordinary and the cast is one of the best looking groups of people I have seen. Subtitles are in bad Hong Kong movie English, but isn't that part of the fun?
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
two master chefs go at it in a humorous culinary kung fu mov, January 17, 1999
By A Customer
two master chefs duke it out to become the emporors chef. the filming of the cooking technique borders as a kung fu flick and awesome culinary skill. the food is intriguingly filmed and the plot has twist and turns that sometimes swerve away from the true nature of this culinary adventure. i have seen this movie 3 times and still enjoy every minute of it. Highly recomended for those of a culinary persuasion.
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