Adam E
Released in 1994, Love On Delivery (aka King Of Destruction) is a Hong Kong comedy starring Stephen Chow as a naive delivery boy who tries to impress a girl by learning martial arts from a wise master, who may not exactly be the all-knowing badass he claims to be.
Christy Chung plays Lily, a Judo student whose teacher (Joe Cheng) keeps hitting on her. This prompts her to kiss a stranger to get him off her back. The stranger in question is candid delivery boy Ang Ho-Kam (Stephen Chow) who suddenly finds himself falling in love with her. The problem is he just doesn't cut it when it comes to holding his own. After struggling to purchase Jacky Cheung concert tickets to take Lily out on a date (Cheung cameos in the film), he fails to defend her against the Judo master making advances so she breaks it off with Ang, calling him a coward. Defeated, Ang meets a shop owner called Tat (Ng Man Tat) who claims to be a martial arts expert and is willing to teach him, for a price. The price turns out to be all of Ang's money since Tat proves to be a very obvious conman. Can Ang learn... anything about self-defense before Lily gives up on him entirely?
One of Stephen Chow's earliest comedies as (co-)director, Love On Delivery marked his second collaboration with long-time partner-in-crime Lee Lik-chi and its quick pacing in terms of jokes helped establish a new wave of slapstick spoof comedies in the vein of the 70's Michael Hui classics, but with a more modern edge. Chow's trademark style of comedy is very much in full force here, as is his deadpan demeanor. The visual gags get goofier and goofier as the movie goes on and every character is sillier than the next, with the likes of The Terminator, Rocky and Kamen Rider getting spoofed along the way. Tat's effortless scamming of Ang is the highlight of the film as it leads to some truly hilarious confrontations including Ang's discovery of the Fire Spin move which consists of simply grabbing someone then falling down a flight of stairs with them.
About halfway through, the film sees Ang sport a Garfield mask and fight his nemesis, the mean Judo teacher, but the real challenge he has to face is a professional fighter played by Ben Lam who challenges him to a big match after wooing Lily. The fight in question is, of course, a complete farce (think Charlie Chaplin's boxing short film) and provides lots of laughs. This is easily one of Chow's funniest movies and it holds up surprisingly well. Some of his more well known works feel a little overrated at times but Love On Delivery delivers (pun intended) in the most important department: the jokes themselves. One would've liked for Christy Chung to do a little bit more in the second half of the film, since her character was meant to know martial arts as well, but other than that the film makes the most of its fun, energetic cast.
If you're looking to discover the works of Stephen Chow and Lee Lik-chi, then the brilliantly anarchic Love On Delivery is not a bad place to start. It's refreshingly not as gross-out as some of Chow's other films, and the slapstick is supported by a genuinely very funny script, which is not always the case.
A good time.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
11/07/23
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Audience Member
Love on Delivery is packed of the famous Chow and Man-Tat combination, which never goes out of style and leaves a lingering aftertaste, maximizing the absurd and whimsical aesthetic.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
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Audience Member
As usual, Chow didn't fail to deliver his trademark over-the-top comedy. I laughed my ribs off lol. The comedic timings are almost impeccable.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
01/29/23
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Audience Member
1.制作：首先从时代性的电影制作手段来讲，我很喜欢这种风格的香港电影就如同我喜欢50年代的美国电影一般。氤氲的场景，一切如梦似幻。
2.情节：这是我第20次以上看这部电影，这次却出奇地流下了泪水。我们都在这个社会飘荡，都在这个社会寻觅真爱，都想付诸全力。这部电影讲了一个童话般的故事，为我们这个缺少真挚，对真情鄙夷的年代，做出了一个让人向往的方向。
3.缅怀吴孟达先生。
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
02/16/23
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jesse o
I am someone who is highly familiar with Stephen Chow's brand of absurdist humor. Chow, in my opinion, is someone that I feel I've probably underrated in my assessment of him. There's honestly very little that I've seen of his, whether he's just an actor in a film and/or also its director, that I haven't enjoyed in some fashion. For a quite a few years, after Kung Fu Hustle came out, which some people still regard as his masterpiece, I felt that it was overrated. At the time, for one reason or another, I just didn't enjoy the film. But, to be fair, that was at a time when I was less familiar with Chow's style than I was when I did re-watch Kung Fu Hustle again a few years ago. On my second watch, the movie definitely did click for me, even if I felt that Chow's character was a major dick for no reason. I don't know if I would regard Kung Fu Hustle as Chow's best movie (as Shaolin Soccer, Journey To The West, The Mermaid are all up there), but it is damn good regardless. Here's the thing about Chow though, for those of you who are uninitiated, as I mentioned earlier, his films are absolutely ridiculous, preposterous, absurd, over-the-top, silly, goofy, I could go on and on and on and on with the adjectives. And, really, that's part of his charm. You know that, at the very least, you're gonna watch a movie that's gonna try it's damnedest to entertain the living hell out of you. I don't know if I should say that that's admirable, but I have to appreciate Chow's commitment to making you laugh. Having said all of that, it is a style that's definitely a bit of an acquired taste. Because, unless you're predisposed to that type of silliness going into your first Chow movie, you're probably not even gonna how to react at all of the madness that you are seeing. I feel that's what happened to me when Kung Fu Hustle came out since, I believe, at the time, that would have been the first Chow movie I had seen in its entirety. Regardless, that's neither here nor there, how about we move on to this movie, shall we??? As I mentioned earlier, this falls very much into Chow's style though, when compared to what came later such as Shaolin Soccer, this one is a little more tame in terms of how over-the-top it is. Don't get me wrong, it's still quite over-the-top, just not as much as what would come later from Chow himself. For the most part, while I felt that it wasn't as good as some of Chow's other films, I felt like this was still heading down a relatively good path. Absurdist humor and silliness are king here in this tale of a weak, but kind, delivery boy learning to stand up for himself and fight back against this judo and karate expert (two different people, not the same person who masters more than one martial arts) after being trained by this charlatan who fleeces him out of his money for whatever minor thing he can think of while teaching him. He does all this to prove to the love of his life that he's not a coward, since she wants a man who's brave and, essentially, heroic. If I'm gonna be completely honest, there's really not much to the narrative. First Chow's character gets beat up by the judo expert. He gets trained in ancient Chinese boxing. He uses this absurd move where he rolls himself (and the judo) expert into a ball and they roll down these massive steps to defeat him in order to protect Li from this guy who, apparently, was just about to rape her for literally no reason. He wears a Garfield mask in order to conceal his identity. Which leads to a funny scene in that seemingly every man in town wears a Garfield mask in order to take credit for saving Li to get a kiss from her, since, apparently, you save people from horrible fates because they'll give you something in exchange, not because it's the right thing to do. Regardless, the parade of Garfields running after Li and then all shoving themselves into a car (like clowns), before, somehow, they all go flying high into the air is very entertaining nonetheless. After this part of the movie, the karate expert comes into the equation and he takes credit for saving Li, even though he wasn't anywhere near the vicinity at the time (he was in Japan). He 'conquers' Li as a result and, later at the press conference, he proposes to Li. Before all of this, however, Chow's character (who's named differently in the Netflix version than this movie's Wikipedia entry suggests) challenges the karate expert to a fight to the death...or something. This fight is going to be broadcast by this struggling TV station hopeful for someone's death, since it mean their ratings will go through the roof. So, yes, in terms of narrative, there's nothing much to write about here. As silly as some of Chow's movies more famous movies are, at the same time, I feel like most of them have stronger characters and narratives than this. There's nothing to this movie other than Chow competing with other martial artists for Li's love. Li isn't really even a real character anyway, she's just a plot device. She's the McGuffin, she has no real personality and she's only there to get Chow's character to fight for her. So there's that. And, to me, while the first half or so of the movie is entertaining, I do feel that the movie starts to drag once they introduce the karate expert. It's like the fight with the judo expert was the story's natural conclusion, but they had to find a way to extend the film for another 45 minutes, since the movie pretty much goes most of its running time, credits only go one minute. And, I'll be honest, while the climactic fight between Chow and the karate expert was good and it led to some good comedy, I felt that the movie pretty much slowed to a crawl to the point where, honestly, I can't give this 3 stars. Like I said, it felt like this movie should have been half as long with how everything was set up. But, unfortunately, it wasn't. It was 92 minutes long and , while that's not long, it certainly felt that long and maybe even longer. So that's a shame. So yes, the first half of the movie was very entertaining, second half dragged a lot regardless of the entertaining climax. This might be the first Chow movie I've seen in ages that I didn't like. Well, I liked parts of it and the parts I didn't like really did drag this movie down quite a bit. This is still decent and I'm certain that most people will like this better than me, but I just felt that its pacing issues in the second half could not be overlooked. This is just one man's opinion, of course, but I can't say I would recommend this because of those pacing issues.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Best Chow's movie. Despite not having cg effect like Shaolin Soccer or Kung fu Hustle, it has brilliant cantonese jokes, garfield and ''Super (Wind) Flame Wheel'' to make up for it.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/04/23
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