美國觀眾總算看到了周星馳比較好的電影

美國觀眾總算看到了周星馳最好的電影

If comedy crossed borders as easily as noodle soup or cellphone operating systems, Stephen Chow would be in America what he is in Asia: an integral part of moviegoers’ lives, the man who makes them laugh so hard that they’re embarrassed the next day.

如果喜劇可以像湯面或手機(jī)操作系統(tǒng)那樣輕松跨越國界，周星馳在美國的地位可能會和他在亞洲一樣，在?？措娪暗娜松钫加兄匾囊幌?，能讓人們捧腹大笑，第二天想起來簡直都有點(diǎn)難為情。

It’s not as if Mr. Chow, an enormously popular actor and director in Hong Kong for the last 25 years, hasn’t tried. His period gangster comedy “Kung Fu Hustle” got a big American push in 2005 and grossed $17 million, impressive for a foreign-language movie. But that breakthrough hasn’t led anywhere. He’s bigger than ever in Asia — “Journey to the West” was China’s No. 1 film last year at $202 million, beating “Iron Man 3” by $80 million in that country — but here he’s going backward. “Journey” grossed an infinitesimal $18,000 in the United States.

這位過去25年來在香港紅極一時的演員兼導(dǎo)演并非沒有嘗試過。2005年，他的古裝黑幫喜劇《功夫》在美國大獲成功，票房收入達(dá)到1700萬美元，對于一部外國片來說相當(dāng)可觀。但這個突破并沒有取得任何后續(xù)成果。他在亞洲比以往更重要——去年，他的《西游降魔篇》在中國位居票房首位，達(dá)到2.02億美元，比《鋼鐵俠3》在中國的票房高出8000萬美元——但在美國，他的影響力卻在下降?！段饔谓的吩诿绹猾@得微不足道的1.8萬美元票房收入。

There are obvious reasons comedy doesn’t always translate, including language barriers — Mr. Chow’s films are full of Cantonese puns and invective — and differing cultural cues and styles. But Stephen Chow: The King of Comedy, an eight-film retrospective beginning Monday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, suggests another reason for his relative obscurity here: Maybe we haven’t been seeing the right Stephen Chow movies.

顯然，在喜劇中，語言障礙(周星馳的電影中充滿粵語雙關(guān)語和罵人話)與不同的文化暗示和風(fēng)格并不總是能夠翻譯得出。但是周一在布魯克林音樂學(xué)院舉辦的“周星馳：喜劇之王”電影回顧展(包括八部影片)展示出另一個他在美國不夠出名的原因：我們可能沒有看到他最好的影片。

The series, which runs through Sunday, includes the more recent, bigger-budgeted films that have been released here: “Journey,” “Kung Fu Hustle” and the 2004 “Shaolin Soccer.” But it also offers some prime examples of his earlier work, the anarchic, hastily made comedies he starred in and sometimes directed in the 1990s. In that decade, he appeared in more than 40 movies; since then, just four.

這個系列展映一直持續(xù)到周日，包括近期曾在美國上映過的大制作影片《西游降魔篇》、《功夫》，以及2004年的《少林足球》。但也有一些他早期的經(jīng)典之作——他在20世紀(jì)90年代主演和偶爾執(zhí)導(dǎo)的那些混亂倉促的喜劇片。在那十年間，他曾出演40多部電影，之后僅出演過四部。

Mr. Chow’s 21st-century movies retain the off-the-cuff goofiness of classic Hong Kong comedy, but they’re more polished, with comprehensible plots and expensive digital effects. The 1990s films lack the polish and coherence, but that’s no barrier to enjoyment. If “Justice, My Foot!” (1992) or “God of Cookery” (1996) had been released in America, their continuous, disorderly but inspired silliness might have found an appreciative audience in the years of Bill & Ted and Austin Powers.

周星馳在21世紀(jì)拍攝的電影保持了香港電影中經(jīng)典的即興裝瘋賣傻，但更加精致，有著易于理解的情節(jié)和昂貴的數(shù)碼特效。90年代的片子沒有這些修飾和連貫性，但并不影響它們的觀賞性。如果《審死官》(1992)或《食神》(1996)在美國上映，它們當(dāng)中那些綿綿不絕、雜亂無章，但又充滿創(chuàng)意的傻氣橋段或許會在《比爾和泰德歷險記》(Bill & Ted)以及《王牌大賤諜》(Austin Powers)的觀眾中找到知音。

“Justice, My Foot!,” the earliest film in the Academy series, was directed by the great Hong Kong action auteur Johnnie To, and he keeps it moving at breakneck speed. Mr. Chow plays a shyster lawyer, Sung, who wins cases by firing off nonsensical arguments at an equally fast pace, bewildering the provincial judges who try to keep up with him.

《審死官》是這次展映中年代最早的影片，由杰出的香港動作片導(dǎo)演杜琪峰執(zhí)導(dǎo)，他讓片子飛速發(fā)展。周星馳飾演不擇手段的訟師宋世杰，他用極快的語速拋出無意義的爭論，大惑不解的縣官們跟不上他的語速，他便贏得了訴訟。

Sung has a problem, though: His wife wants him to retire, because she believes that every time he helps an undeserving client win, one of their sons dies in infancy. She has a point — they’ve lost 12 sons, and when Sung helps out a troublemaker early in the movie, they lose No. 13. Sung finally promises to change professions — saying that if he breaks his oath, their next son will be born without a penis — but before you know it, his wife is so overcome with sympathy for a woman who’s being forced to marry that she asks him to return to lawyering.

但是宋世杰也有自己的問題，妻子希望他退休，因為她相信每次他幫助不該獲勝的主顧贏得官司，他們就會有一個兒子夭折。她的確有道理——他們已經(jīng)失去了12個兒子，片子一開始，宋世杰幫助一個惹是生非的人脫罪后，他們又失去了第13個兒子。宋世杰最終承諾改行，說如果自己打破誓言，下一個兒子就生下來沒有雞雞——但是，還不等兒子出生，他的妻子又因為同情一個被迫結(jié)婚的女人，讓他重操舊業(yè)。

Madam Sung is played by the Canto-pop diva Anita Mui, who died in 2003, as a scornful, no-nonsense spouse with kung fu skills, and in most of the movies in the series Mr. Chow’s characters are paired with iron-willed women who expose the comic hero’s vanity and weakness. In the major Hong Kong hit “The God of Cookery,” Karen Mok plays a disfigured night-market hawker who helps Mr. Chow’s arrogant celebrity chef rebuild his career.

宋夫人嚴(yán)肅傲慢，有一身功夫，由2003年逝世的粵語天后梅艷芳飾演，展映的大多數(shù)影片中，周星馳的角色身邊都有意志堅強(qiáng)的女性角色，她們有著漫畫英雄式的虛榮和脆弱?！妒成瘛吩谙愀鄯浅Ｗ呒t，片中莫文蔚飾演一個毀容的夜市攤販，幫助周星馳飾演的傲慢名廚重整事業(yè)。

“God of Cookery,” which Mr. Chow directed with Li Lik-Chi, is a quick-and-dirty parody of “Iron Chef” (created three years before in Japan) in which bodily fluids, savage beatings and childish sexual innuendo play as large a role as food. But the food is there, looking alternately delicious and inedible, in hilarious cooking-competition scenes scripted and staged like the hammy battles in Hong Kong kung fu flicks. The story, which Mr. Chow also had a hand in, swerves into gangster territory and martial-arts burlesque, as the chef discovers that the mythical China Cookery Academy is actually the kitchen of the Shaolin temple.

《食神》由周星馳與李力持共同執(zhí)導(dǎo)，是對三年前的日本影片《料理鐵人》(Iron Chef)的快餐式戲仿?！读侠龛F人》中不僅有料理，也充滿體液、野蠻的打斗和兒童色情暗示。但在《食神》中則是歡樂滑稽的廚藝大賽，臺詞和表演都像是香港功夫片里鬧劇式的功夫場面，食物有時美味，有時完全無法食用。周星馳也參與了劇本創(chuàng)作，他飾演的大廚發(fā)現(xiàn)神秘的“中國廚藝學(xué)院”其實是少林寺的廚房，此后情節(jié)突然轉(zhuǎn)向?qū)趲推臀鋫b片的滑稽模仿。

The last film Mr. Chow directed (also with Mr. Li) before “Shaolin Soccer” was the “King of Comedy” (1999), a transitional work with a fairly intelligible story and a well-worked-out theme of performance versus dull reality. Mr. Chow plays Wan, whose day job is supervising a sleepy neighborhood rec center but who dreams of being an actor. On the set of the kung fu thriller where his aunt gets him work as an extra, he spouts Stanislavskian theory and manages to ruin an elaborate shot even though he’s playing a dead body. (“Subconsciously,” he says, “I don’t want to die yet.”)

周星馳在《少林足球》之前執(zhí)導(dǎo)的最后一部影片是1999年的《喜劇之王》，這是一部轉(zhuǎn)型之作，有著明白易懂的故事情節(jié)和精心設(shè)計的主題，是關(guān)于表演與沉悶現(xiàn)實之間的對抗。周星馳飾演尹天仇，正式工作是為一群昏昏欲睡的鄰居們看管娛樂活動中心，但他夢想成為演員。他的阿姨在一部功夫驚悚片的片場給他找了個臨時演員的工作，雖然只是飾演一具死尸，但他滔滔不絕地講述斯坦尼拉夫斯基的理論，破壞了一個精心設(shè)計的復(fù)雜鏡頭(“我的角色還不想死，”他說，“這是下意識的。”)