a review of 少林搭棚大师

2021 Cult Movie Challenge Week 5: Shaw Brothers Week Movie #1 Although I definitely understand the reasons why this movie doesn't directly follow on from its predecessor, and why Gordon Liu is playing a different character who has to scramble his way from nothing all the way back up the ladder of martial arts mastery, I still felt like this was diminishing returns from the previous movie. Part of it is the new slapstick tone. Although Liu does a great job pulling off the physical comedy and portraying a more hapless character, there's something about his screen presence that makes it hard to forget how formidable he is, even when he's playing a somewhat convincing goofball. The other part is the comparative lack of variation to the fights. I don't have the technical vocabulary to describe what was different here, but I felt like there were a lot of fights that could have been half the length and still gotten the job done in terms of selling us on the action and danger.