AUGUST 23 — Stinky tofu lets out an awful stench but for many people it tastes awesome.

Our king of fruits gives Westerners the impression they’re eating smelly socks but tell that to the hordes of folks throwing their money away for Musang King.

Ayam gepuk’s sambal can sometimes leave patrons with anaesthetised lips, sweating buckets and (later on) severe sore throat but when Ming Chun’s Gepuklah opened recently, the street basically ran out of parking lots.

Ditto, with Stephen Chow movies. There are so many things which are sub-par by modern-day film-making standards, yet his movies win big.

Watch any of his blockbusters since the turn of the century and you’ll know what I mean.

Nobody can watch The Mermaid or CJ7 or the latest Kungfu Soccer and suggest that anyone in the cast should be nominated for an acting award.

Oftentimes the acting comes across as something out of a primary school project with the kids simply doing what their teacher told them to do (with quick glances at the audience to check if they’re doing the right thing).

In Kung Fu Soccer, lead actress Xiaofei Zhang more or less shouts and pouts for the entire movie and everyone else is essentially one-dimensional.

We are worlds away from seeing a Meryl Streep or Gary Oldman performance here.

And yes, I’m aware that Yuen Wah won a Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actor in Kung Fu Hustle (playing an aged tai-chi master joining the first against triads), but this is something as mysterious as tai-chi itself.

I’ve watched his performance numerous times — a performance which includes lying face down on the ground and burying his head with the soil from broken flower pots around him — and I can only conclude that it was a sort of honorary award.

Chow’s script is chock full of cheesy moments, dad jokes and childish gags which would probably bore the average Comedy Club fan to tears.

For example, in Kung Fu Soccer there’s a scene when a guy is thrown on the floor and his head gets stuck in a pot. This blind lady tries to smash the pot open without knowing that another guy has already removed the pot from the guy’s head.

The result is half a dozen instances of the dude being smashed on the head with bigger and more brutal items while the lady doing the smashing keeps asking if the pot is broken or not.

That’s just frickin’ stupid… but I and the rest of the audience were laughing like we’ve never laughed before.

And don’t even get me started on the CGI. I’m positive no Hollywood director or producer would be caught dead using the sorts of “animation” Chow uses in his films.

Hollywood CGI seeks to make the unbelievable believable; Stephen Chow’s “CGI” practically screams “This part of the movie is super-fake, everyone knows it and everyone will love it”.

It’s slapstick gone overboard, making even Naked Gun look sensible.

This is truly the magic of Stephen Chow’s movies. The acting is torrid, the script is cheesy, the CGI is (literally) a joke — but we can’t get enough of the movie.

I left Kung Fu Soccer telling myself the film rivalled The Odyssey and Spiderman: Brand New Day (hell yeah, I said it).

Chow is no Nolan but you’ll never watch Tenet or Interstellar and laugh and cry without entirely being sure why you’re so moved.

Kung Fu Soccer’s story will never match Homer’s epic tales but nobody will watch this show about a team of quirky and super-powerful women football players and not notice that there are timeless themes of growth, love, self-discovery, friendship, forgiveness, etc. all of which are found in every major literary narrative.

Finally, Kung Fu Soccer’s animation can never hold a candle to what Marvel Studios can produce but, amazingly, the movie doesn’t require “world-class” special effects to make the story work.

To end with yet another food analogy, you know how sometimes the best Hokkien mee stalls can be found in some 40-year-old alley or under a century-old tree next to a busy street?

And the noodles and sauce are so good precisely because you’re eating within humble settings and not, say, inside a 5-star hotel?

 * This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.