Royal Tramp

Wai Siu Bo grew up in a brothel and earns his living telling stories. He cannot fight, knows no martial arts, and talking is his only skill. One day he helps a wounded man in the street; the man turns out to be the leader of a secret society and takes him in. The task is this: he will get inside the palace and find a book. Siu Bo enters as a eunuch. There he meets the young emperor and they become friends; the emperor does not say who he is. There are other factions in the palace and all of them are after the same book. Wong Jing directs. Stephen Chow plays Siu Bo; Ng Man-Tat, Sharla Cheung and Chingmy Yau are in the cast. The source is Louis Cha's novel The Deer and the Cauldron. The novel is among the best known works of Chinese martial arts fiction and has been adapted many times. The film was made in two parts the same year and the second opened a few months later. Its humour is in the mo lei tau style, built on nonsense and sudden shifts of register. The narrative satirises the martial arts genre; the hero observes no rules and wins his fights by trickery. It took a strong result at the Hong Kong box office. The handling of the women belongs to its period and may be found uncomfortable today. Its limit is structure; the plot is tangled and the strands of the novel compressed. Who it is for: viewers who like Hong Kong comedy and Stephen Chow. Who it is not for: the humour is very local, the plot tangled, and the representation a problem.