The literal Chinese title is just "Kung Fu." The word "hustle" was probably added to the English title so as not to confuse it with the TV show, or with the film Kung Pow.

Yeah - we added the "Hustle" for our release. I saw an interview with Stephen Chow, where he was asking the journalist why she thought they added that word, and asking what it meant. "Is that a good thing?"

As for the marketing campaign - I don't know - a word-of-mouth campaign couldn't have been worse than the trailers were. I think the trailers actually did damage to the film. It made the film come off as some cheesy "Kung Pow II", which it is not. They should've made trailers on critical reviews(there were many good reviews out for it from its screening at Sundance, including a Thumbs Up from Roger Ebert), AND the testimonials. At worst, it would've been just as bad, but it likely would've been much better.

The Ring 2 didn't have the great critical reviews to go with the testimonials - putting those two together would probably quell the "it sucks" line. It probably doesn't just "suck" if it's the best reviewed wide-release film of the year so far - and it's that well reviewed AND a "fun" movie, which is rare. I believe that kind of marketing campaign would've served this film much better.

Actually, it's just the English title chosen for the film; the Hong Kong release also refers to the film as "Kung Fu Hustle" in its English translations.

Many, many, many Hong Kong films have English titles that differ from their Chinese ones. The A Better Tomorrow series has a Chinese title that can be roughly translated as "The True Colors of a Hero." Sometimes the alterations cen seem arbitrary, but they're usually chosen by the Chinese producers.

As for Sony's promotion of this film, I actually like the US trailer. It didn't give me the impression of Kung Pow 2 at all. Kung Pow looked cheap and cheesy. I thought the trailer for Kung Fu Hustle made it look much more impressivly visually and action packed, if a bit silly. Which actually, describes the film well.

And as for using critic blurbs, nearly every TV ad I've seen for this has 3-4 critic blurbs in it. I'm not sure what other ads people are seeing that were actually sans critic blurbs. Even the poster has a critic blurb on it.

If anything, the only complaint I have is with the poster, which is maybe a little too cartoony. However, even that is light years better than Miramax's poster for Shaolin Soccer. :shudder:

Let's face it, a foreign language film with no recognizable stars is going to be a hard sell. Sony really did their best with this, and they should be commended for the amount of promotion and distribution they gave to this film. And really, it's doing very well considering its hinderances. Hero had the advantage of several recognizable stars (Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi), as well as the "Quentin Tarantino Presents" tagline. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again had recognizable stars as well as a critically loved director. Hustle may not have been #1 this past weekend, but #5 ain't all that bad.

And I'm not saying the performance is all that bad, but I still think the trailer and TV ads have not served the film well. I am a big fan of Stephen Chow, as is my wife. But when we first saw the trailer she looked over at me indicated skepticism, and I felt the same way. Had I not already known about Stephen Chow, I would not have been very interested in seeing this film. I would've seen it just to support a foreign language film with my dollars, but I wouldn't have been excited by it by any stretch.

And I have heard several comments from friends that saw and Loved the movie, and thanked me for getting them to go because they never would've gone before because the ads made the film "look cheesy". Again, I have to agree.

I realize the difficulty in making a trailer for that film, but I think the film is doing well DESPITE the trailer and not because of it.

However, the bright spot in all of this is that I believe the next Stephen Chow movie will be able to be sold on the basis of his name in large part. He will be the "recognizable actor" like the ones you mentioned from those other movies, if not moreso, because the word of mouth on Kung Fu Hustle will be so good, and the DVD release will do very well.

The only wild card on DVD - do they put a dub on it or not? I'm afraid if they do, then many will rent it and watch it with the dub and think "what's the big deal", as dubs just suck all the life out of a movie. If they presented the movie subtitled only, like they do with other arthouse foreign releases, they'd get less rentals in the short run but probably more in the long run and a better reputation - as people would be forced to watch the subtitles and thus inevitably enjoy the movie much more.

Monday's Box Office put Kung Fu Hustle up to #3 with $629,000 for the day, according to imdbpro.com.

Seems like it's holding up very well in the week.

Just watched this. Great little insane movie. Might have to buy it. I didn't really care for the way he the main guy became neo but what the hell. I did like the end of the last battle and how he took care of super big bad guy.

it also seems like the idea for forgien language films with trailers is to slightly trick the audience to seeing it not knowing there are subtitles. (i remeber people walking out of hero once they realized that this isn't directed by qt and there are full on subtlties.

I just got "Kung Fu Hustle" as a present for Christmas from my hip nephew and was introduced to a whole new world of witty and intelligent filmmaking I didn't even know existed.

Why doesn't anyone tell me about those things?!

It's the first CGI-reliant comedy I see that has any worth on the script level. This Stephen Chow is a genius of the first magnitude and I don't think he even knows it. His film makes fun of the kind of martial arts films I despise (and Tarantino worships) while paying hommage to the kind that I like ("Crouching Tiger", etc.). I think it's the best film in my collection from 2004.

I tried to get into this last night. I feel guilty as a fan of film but I just couldnt be taken for a ride by its quarkyness. I did like Shaolin Soccer though.

Quarkyness is what it's all about. Genius is the exaggeration of a single idea.