Big Trouble in Little China officially bills itself as "a mystical action-adventure-comedy-kung-fu-monster-ghost-story." If this sounds anything like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, the last major-studio attempt to mix half a dozen genres into one maddening mishmash, you don't have to look far to discover why.
The same W.D. Richter who created Buckaroo Banzai worked on this script, and Twentieth Century Fox again financed it. But at least Richter didn't direct this time, and the cast, under John Carpenter's direction, is strong enough to make up for the insufferable in-jokey, put-on attitude that Richter brings to these projects.
Buckaroo Banzai had only one amusing performance, a supporting turn by John Lithgow as the mad villain, but Big Trouble in Little China has several. Best of all, its hero, a greasy, unshaven trucker named Jack Burton, is played by Kurt Russell, who does the most ingeniously sustained imitation of John Wayne this side of a stand-up comic's impersonation. Along with Dennis Dun as his sidekick, Kim Cattrall as his girlfriend and Kate Burton as a green reporter, he makes the movie a lot more fun than its script.
The story, which is just as deliberately confusing as the plot line of Buckaroo Banzai, starts off with Russell and Dun visiting the San Francisco airport to pick up Dun's future bride. When she is kidnapped by Chinatown thugs, they give chase and find themselves doing battle with a centuries-old sorcerer who uses Chinese black magic to thwart them and marry her.
This
allows for as many special effects as you'll find in any Star Wars
epic, although after an hour or so, you may get visual fatigue from all
the lightning displays, fireworkslike explosions, wizards' duels and gliding,
translucent demons. What holds Big Trouble together is the cast's
way with Richter's outrageous dialog, which ranges from fortune-cookie
banalities ("Only a dream can kill a dream") to Burton's off-the-wall pronouncements
("May the wings of liberty never lose a feather"). I give Big Trouble
In Little China a 10 out of 10!
Click here to download Big Trouble In Little China (The Coupe de Villes) song from the film in MP3 format!
