"Kung Fu Hustle" is a movie-lovers movie. It is also a nearly perfect film. A terrific parody of action-film makingpast and presentwhile at the same time being just as slick and glossy as those modern films themselves. There are plenty of computer- generated special effects, but Chow choreographs some brilliant, straight-ahead stuff as well, with plain old stop-action and clever cutting to thrill us, not just with the slam bam, but with the pleasure of a subtly used camera as well.

Some, but by no means all, of the films and film styles that Chow simultaneously roasts and pays homage too include, in order of most heavily drawn from include:

Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West," the Italian director's broad, operatic, and slightly surreal epic of good, evil, and revenge in frontier America.

The so-called "Chinese sword movie" of the late 60's and early 70's. This genre is not to be confused with the pale and anemic contemporary versions, such as "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon." The Taiwanese productions of the earlier era were meant strictly for Chinese audiences. Only a few dedicated art houses and the public theaters in the Chinatowns of America's big cities ever showed these films. They had plenty of razzle dazzle and fantasy-style fight scenes; but the plots of these early Asian films were complex and clearly drawn from the rich Chinese mythology, with literary-quality characterizations, themes and plot construction.

The slapstick and pratfall-laden "action comedies" of the silent eratypified best of course, by the films of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

Chuck Jones and his classic Roadrunner cartoonsbrilliantly recreated in a live-action sequence that had me doubled over on the floor.

Contemporary, humorless, overly-special-effects-driven drivel like "The Matrix," and the afore-mentioned "Crouching Tiger."

The wonderful musicals of Fred Astair. And if the homage isn't clear, there is actually a scene where two actors are locked in a villain/victim embrace in front of a poster advertising an Astair/Rogers flick in which the postures of the two dancers parallel the ones in the foregrounda treat of directorial reference that lasts but a few seconds.

The films of independent director Hal Hartleywhere characters are suddenly and inexplicably (and briefly) placed in a chorus line for a brief dance that is essentially unrelated to the film.

Gangster movies of the forties, and--at least in once scene"The Godfather."

Chow even manages to work some heart (not to say sentimentality) into a story that is mostly satiric. Stephen Chow wrote, directed, produced and starred in this thinga real wonder boy and a true heir to Chaplin, Keaton, and Harold Lloyd.

If you don't like this film, you haven't been to the movies enough.