Fridae

Kung Fu Dunk is a bubblegum movie designed to entertain viewers aged 17 and below. It is slick, colourful, energetic, superficial and a little silly. (If you're 21 and above, we suggest you stay away.)

Based on a Japanese manga, Jay Chou plays a lonely orphan raised in a kungfu school. When shrewd businessman Eric Tsang spots him shooting drink cans into a faraway bin with uncanny accuracy, he quickly recruits Jay to play varsity basketball at the local university.

Jay soon learns that there is more to basketball (and life) than simply shooting hoops. It's about focus and determination and camaraderie and sacrifice and tears... well, you get the picture.

To please its young target audience, everything has been kept very, very simple. Characters are one-note and somewhat cartoony. Predicaments are solved in ten minutes or less. And all the young leads have some sort of BGR problem: Jay can't get Charlene Choi to notice him. The team captain (Chen Bolin) can't get over a girl. The star player (Baron Chen) can't forget his dead ex-girlfriend.

Director Kevin Chu is smart enough to gives its young actors roles that are well suited to their personas. Mumbling lead actor Jay, for instance, doesn't have that much talking to do, showing his emotions instead through a wide array of quizzical expressions. It's actually, well, quite cute � but only because it's Jay.

Touted as the most expensive Taiwanese production ever, catch Kung Fu Dunk only if you have the mind and soul of a teenage boy.

Verdict: Three ang pows. As teenage bubblegum movies go, this one's a slam-dunk.