Synopsis:

If you have ever watched the "Iron Chef" on the Food Network, then you have a fairly good understanding of the "God Of Cookery! Stephen Chow is the "God of Cookery". A top chef and poster boy for the multi-billion dollar a year business of food preparation and marketing. Hosting a weekly TV show, Chow holds court with four of the top chef's in the surrounding locales. While sampling all of their works, he comments on the taste, texture and overall presentation of the food items prepared. His critique is so scathing that he even brings one chef to tears over his evidently inept culinary dish. Not too mention his less than pleasing physical appearance! Quite content to bully and boss any and everyone around him, he commands the cooking world from atop the rooftop expanse of his office building. When you are the top dog and all you can do is belittle those "beneath" you, someone is going to be gunning for you and such is the case here. While opening the first of a chain of "God of Cookery" restaurants, Chow is upstaged by an underling he mistook for a bootlicking menial! Thoroughly embarrassed he attempts to save face but bad goes to worse as he is then arrested by the local police for serving rotten beef to a group of customers in a nearby store. It all goes down hill from here and we find Chow quickly losing all he's worked hard to achieve. Dejected and without his fame or fortune, Chow ends up in a seedier part of town which falls deeply under the shadow of the current reigning "God of Cookery's" tower of operations. After he is beaten, urinated on and almost killed, Chow realizes he can reclaim his position by creating a dish that will turn the cooking world upside down. "Pissing Beef Balls" (seriously) is his invention and the subsequent response from the public is nothing less than staggering. It appears that Chow and his new band of "friends" have set upon something that will make them all very rich. But will Chow be able to defeat the current "God of Cookery" and take back his throne? I can't spoil it for you! Suffice it to say, the "God of Cookery" while not an appetizing experience, is a mish mosh of all kinds of dramatic, tragic, romantic and comic cinematic hi-jinks that when combined present a very appealing film.

Audio/Video:

The audio is presented in both Cantonese and Mandarin on a DD5.1 platform. There were really no surround effects to speak of. This film is dialogue driven so the center channel had the most work to do. Outside of say a gong here and there and maybe some rain in the latter half of the film, there was no activity in the surrounds. The .1 LFE was employed fairly consistently and was rich in its presentation. The transfer is rich with a great many well saturated colors however, on the whole the print seemed a bit dark. The widescreen presentation showed very little in the way of chroma noise and I noticed only a few speckles of white here and there throughout the film. Fleshttones were natural and the blacks were very deep.

Extras:

The extras on the "God of Cookery" are a little on the skimpy side. The film's trailer (Presented in Mandarin w/out subtitles) is included. As are very brief bios on three of the main characters.

Overall:

Having enjoyed "The Iron Chef" I really took to liking the The "God of Cookery" right off. It's irreverent, rude, funny and serious and all without missing a beat! The subtitles could have stayed on-screen just a little longer as there were many times when I missed a part of the dialogue and needed to run back a few seconds but that didn't stop me from enjoying what amounted to a comedic look at cooking shows and the popularity of their hosts. In short, this is a very entertaining film! Recommended