The Japanese sense of humor is a little odd, and translates more toward the bizarre and inexplicable than anything else. You’ll get a perfect sense of that in Shaolin Grandma, a fantastic martial-arts comedy directly imported from the Rising Sun itself.
A postman finds an elderly woman dead in her house, and while waiting for paramedics to arrive, he reads the long, confusing, and hilarious story of her life in several volumes of scrolls, including one really unpleasant one that discusses, in shudder-inducing detail, her sex life.
She’ll go from master of her own Shaolin Kung Fu dojo to one of the greatest entertainers in Japan and beyond. And while there are plenty of laughs in here, there’s also plenty to think about. Watching this little old lady, poised and calm above all else, move through life with more simple grace and charm than even Forrest Gump could generate is a genuine and very unexpected thrill. One thing’s perfectly clear, this one is hilarious. There are tons of great jokes in here, and probably plenty more I just plain don’t understand.
And of course, for extra fun, there will even be some of those great and downright implausible action sequences where even little old ladies can fling themselves around and deliver kicks that can send people flying for blocks.
Sure, this is intended to be a parody of Stephen Chow’s Shaolin Soccer, but it turns out to have plenty of reason to watch all by itself. The Screenhead Ten Scale gives it a solid eight out of ten for sheer laughs and entertainment value. The ending will be mostly incomprehensible, but other than that, the rest of the movie will be sweet.
Popularity: unranked [?]
