Hail the Judge is Stephen Chow's take on the popular Chinese hero Judge Pao, who helped to correct injustices during the Ming dynasty. However, Chow's version of Judge Pao is more interested in money than helping people. The big problem is that he's a bit of an idiot, and keeps getting tricked by a shady lawyer (Lawrence Ng), who also manages to convince the entire town that Pao is the source of their misery.

While trying to hide out from the angry populace, Pao and his sidekick (who is, of course, played by Ng Man-Tat) manage to pull a double-cross on another corrupt official (Elvis Tsui) and become heroes. Inspired by his new-found popularity, Pao vows to stay honest as a murder case involving a beautiful woman (Cheung Man) enters his courtroom. But the ghosts of Pao's past are not so easily put behind him, as the lawyer returns and turns the tables on Pao, turning him into the accused. Pao manages to escape jail, goes on the run, meets an interesting set of characters and begins to plot his revenge.

Normally, I find Stephen Chow's movies hilarious, even though a lot of the jokes fly over my head due to my lack of knowledge of Cantonese. But Hail the Judge falls flat. It's not a bad movie per se; it just lacks those gut-busting moments fans have come to expect from Chow's work. The movie takes a long time to get going, and when it does (via a pretty funny scene where Stephen picks up the fine art of arguing from a catty madam played by Yuen King Tan) it feels like it's too little, too late. I will grant that the last twenty minutes or so, which features the final courtroom showdown between Stephen and Lawrence Ng, do pack in a few good jokes, but their relatively small payoff laugh-wise isn't worth the eighty minutes or so of pedestrian, by-the-book "nonsense comedy" which precedes it.

This was Stephen Chow's last collaboration with prolific producer/writer Wong Jing, and that might be the problem. Even though they created some memorable works together, such as God of Gamblers II and Royal Tramp, Hail the Judge comes of as a half-baked effort from both director and star. It just feels too disjointed, like everyone on the set wasn't on the same page. Wong seemed to sense something was off, and tries to "enhance" things with lots of swearing and some bloody torture scenes.

But frankly, you can't have a Stephen Chow movie without Stephen Chow -- and Chow just seems to be sleepwalking through his performance, and that drowsy feeling unfortunately transfers over to the viewer. Again, Hail the Judge is by no means a bad movie on the scale of Super Dragon's Dynamo or Bruce Li's Greatest Revenge, but both Stephen Chow and Wong Jing have done much better movies than this that are more worthy of your time. Unless you're a completist, Hail the Judge can be put on hold until that proverbial rainy day comes around.

[review from www.hkfilm.net]