The Little Drunken Masters (1995)
Reviewed by: MrBooth on 2002-03-14
Kiddie kung fu movie 18 little monks are sent away from the Shaolin Temple when it is raided by the evil King Fifth (Hung Yan Yan) who is looking for the little buddha. We know that one of these kids is the Little Buddha, and the task of getting them all to the one man who can tell who falls to Carman Lee. Quite what she was doing at Shaolin Temple at the time isn't quite clear, but it's lucky she was I guess. Carman sets out on the way with kids in tow, and soon enough they bump into Willie Chi. Willie decides to be annoying, and pretends to want to help but with devious intent.

Numerous adventurers occur, mostly of a comical nature, and mostly aimed at kids. Or at least involving kids. It's quite pleasant to watch - especially the young sister of Fatty Monk (same kid from New Legend Of Shaolin), who is quite the cutest little girl ever made. You just want to lock her in a cage and hang her in a corner of the living room, she's so sweet. Carman Lee does a very good job of working with the kids, which must be a really difficult thing to do! Willie Chi mugs a lot and is generally irritating, but does throw in some OK martial arts.

Eventually, Hung Yan Yan catches up with them and is extremely pissed. Great performance from him, flying around and tearing up the scenery with little regard for the fact his opponents are only 8 years old. There are a lot of them though, and they manage to come up with some cool methods to combat Hung Yan Yan's basic invincibility.

There's not as much kiddie-fu here as I'd been hoping for - some of the monks do some nice forms and stuff, but there's nobody with the 'wow' factor of little Tsui Siu Ming (sp?) or the kid in Chivalrous Legend. Some of the humour... ok, most of the humour... is very much aimed at children. The kids performances vary from pretty good to quite awful. But, you've got Carman Lee being cute and a little girl being even cuter, and Hung Yan Yan being mad, so even with Willie Chi on set it can't be all that bad.


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