Let's be realistic.

As Good As It Gets

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Ta Kung (Chi Kuan Chun) is constantly put upon by bullies at the temple. So much so, the Abbot Hu Lin (Kuk Wang) wants him to learn Kung Fu. Kung is adamant in his refusal to learn it. The abuse only intensifies with the arrival of a fake monk (Cliff Ching Ching) who bullies everyone, especially Kung.Hu Lin sends Kung away from the temple for his protection. Hu Lin sends him to an old friend, Shang King (Leung Kar Yun). The Shang King family are all trained in Kung Fu. Ta Kung accepts working for the family, but not Kung Fu instructions. Shang King teaches his student without it appearing he's teaching him. It takes a while for Ta Kung to submit to actually being Shang's student. The training sessions are fun to watch. Especially the scene where Ta Kung is doing push-ups to operate a fan to cool Shang.Ta Kung encounters Meng Fei's character a few times during his stay with the Kings. Meng Fei's character's name is not mentioned (at least I never head him called by name). His master spends most of Fei's training time getting the poor kid drunk to learn Drunken Kung Fu, sometimes to the point Fei passes out.When Shang King and his family are murdered, Ta Kung becomes a student of Fei Meng's Sifu. The two work on techniques to avenge the King family. The finale fight is the bets fight of the movie.I do not understand Fei Meng being in this film. Fei Meng and his Sifu are a subplot for most of the film. They don't become important until nearly the end. It feels as if Chi Kuan Chun and Fei Meng were making movies in the same area and decided to merge them into one. Both are incredibly skilled Wuxia imho. It would have been better had Fei Meng's character not been so underdeveloped.

Firstly the original trailer on my Vengeance DVD calls this 'Temple of Death' but the video itself is definitely called The Ways of Kung Fu. Not mentioned by IMDb is Meng Fui and there are some cameos by the likes of Wa Mu. Who the rest of the cast is is not mentioned.This film starts off very slow and Chi Kwan Chun's character is not actually very sympathetic. The teaching by his master (the brother of his Monk teacher) played by Leung Ka Yan is not that interesting (except for a fight in the rain) and several characters are introduced whose history and role is not at all clear. The final fight is reasonable with interesting use of an iron ring by the renegade Monk. Unusually he is captured rather than killed. The Drunken Boxing scenes are rather wasted as the hero never actually seems to use that style in any of his fights. Not a bad film but could have been a lot better.

The Ways of Kung Fu is a real chop-socky movie. A temple boy gets bullied all the time, yet stubbornly refuses to learn kung fu, because he "doesn't like it". So when a villainous monk is taking over the local temple, the boy's teacher sends him away to stay with a rather hilarious family of kung fu puritans for two years. They practice kung fu all day, because "they don't have time for anything else". Eventually, the boy is forced to learn kung fu, and the last two thirds of the movie are nearly one constant fight scene. That's all the movie is about: fighting.The quality of the kung fu is decent, but not fantastic. There are a couple of kung fu fighting girls as well, and two or three masters and their students, who take on the bad guy and his henchmen. If you want fighting (and what kung fu movie fan doesn't?), this is not a bad movie. I bought this on DVD at full price, and it pretty much fulfilled my expectations of it. It has practically no story, but there are training sequences and fights and fights and more fights. A formulaic, run-of-the-mill kung fu movie, but definitely worth watching for fans of the genre. The guy in the lead is definitely not bad, and the head of the kung fu puritan family is indeed Ka-Yan Leung a.k.a. Beardy, who gives his usual good performance. The ending is very abrupt, but that's par for the course.6 out of 10.

Ta Kun, a student of Shaolin, is bullied all the time by his fellow students. Ta Kun is forced to leave the Shaolin Temple once a corrupt monk, Hutak, takes over. An elder monk, Hunang, tells him to go to a Wu-Tang style family under the guide of a guy who looks exactly like, or is Ka-Yan Leung aka Beardy from legend of a fighter and the Victim. Ta Kun doesn't like learning kung fu here, so he's got to work a lot. But while he's working he's learning kung fu. In the end he's got to fight the new leading monk of the Shaolin Temple.This movie is very slow in the beginning and has some typical characters, like the villain monk who's got some big scars at his face. The fighting scenes are not remarkable. 5/10