TheRetroCritic

Mad genius Stephen Chow has a ball in this send-up of cooking contests and turns Iron Chef into a live-action Tex Avery cartoon complete with "pissing beef balls", Shaolin monks and random spontaneous violence. Yes the story is pretty predictable: a Simon Cowell-style harsh TV critic/chef loses everything and goes back to basics to try and get back to being the titular god of cookery. That said, the film is self-aware and pokes fun at every rags-to-riches movie cliché any chance it gets. The humour is pretty childish throughout and the whole thing is undeniably very silly but it's the kind of silliness that's so out-there (think Jackie Chan meets Bugs Bunny) it's just too much fun to dislike. Visually, Chow throws everything at us from ingredients to...clothes (yes, clothes can self-combust in this film) and brings us a vast array of, shall we say, colourful characters? You've got a chubby brown-noser ready to defecate outside elevators at the drop of a