rena's websight The Chinese Feast
A HK comedy film with cooking contests instead of kung fu fights about a master chef who’s fallen from grace and become an alcoholic, his wife who left him after he prioritized an elite cooking competition over the birth of their child, and mainly a young ex-triad loan shark who leaves to try and become a chef (for some reason) in order to move to Canada to follow his former girlfriend who moved there. He’s bad at it but lands a job somehow, where he meets the fourth main character who is an inspiringly crazy young woman, anyway and gets mixed up in some biz after his former triad members hold a meeting at his place of work. Eventually they’re forced into performing the legendary ‘Imperial Feast’ (which I don’t know if it’s real, but it’s sure bonkers) in a high stakes cooking competition.
The main character is quite shady since he’s an ex-triad loan shark, and cool and competent until he becomes a chef at which point he’s hilariously disasterous. He’s quite likeable and there’s a cute love story involving him which I enjoyed. There’s also some impressively fake but fancy cooking techniques used which made it fun to watch, and the titular ‘Chinese Feast’ itself involves some funky and impressive dishes. Overall I enjoyed the characters in this movie and the hijinks they get up to a lot and I’d recommend it to any fans of Hong Kong comedy films.
