🎥 Movies of 2021, 76: Drunken Tai Chi. Where the hell did Donnie Yen come from? Jackie Chan worked as an extra in films for years before his first starring role. Nearly every star in Hong Kong film did the same, working their way up the ranks until they learned the business and got their break.
But in 1984, apparently out of nowhere, Donnie Yen takes the lead role in Drunken Tai Chi and is astounding. Apparently (according to Wikipedia, un-sourced) he’d met director Yuen Woo Ping 5 years earlier. Had the two of them been planning this debut for the past five years?
Unfortunately, it’s Yuen Woo Ping who lets Yen down here. The film’s first 20 minutes, which focus closely on Yen, are fantastic. But then it devolves into a collection of Yuen Woo Ping’s familiar tropes. There’s puppetry, there’s goofiness (oh so much goofiness), there’s a large collection of jokes that have not aged well. There are fart sound effects. Etc.
None of this is new and none of it suits Donnie Yen particularly well. It worked well for Jackie Chan, who excelled in the role of a lovable brat. But the role is an awkward fit for Yen, as is Yuen’s assorted weirdness.
Donnie Yen would go on to star in 4 of Yuen Woo Ping’s next 5 movies; once they figured out how to write films that worked for Yen’s persona, his star began to rise. But this film shows that it wasn’t Donnie Yen who needed to change, it was Yuen Woo Ping.
