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What is funny?

What is it that makes us laugh?

Theories abound.

This train of thought came to me recently after watching one of the movies in Sammo Hung Kicks Ass, the collection of six films on the Criterion Channel showcasing the balletic martial art talents of a most unlikely martial arts star.

The question came to me while watching the 1989 English-dubbed Pedicab Driver, directed by and starring the great Sammo Hung (Criterion also offers a non-dubbed version).

How often do you laugh out loud with gusto? When I did it while watching Pedicab Driver, it felt so good I had to wonder about the whole idea of laughter and how it’s unleashed.

Being a fan of martial arts movies, I know of the long tradition that mixes comedy with martial arts drama. And I know that no one comes close to merging comedy and martial arts like Sammo Hung. 
Sammo is the everyman of martial arts movies – often called “Fatty” or Fatso” in the movies, he wears a Moe Howard-like bowl haircut and always conveys the demeanor of just a regular guy.

But when it comes time to fight, his bulky frame is as agile as that of a ballet dancer. He is legendary as both actor and stunt choreographer.

Speaking of Sammo’s Moe cut, you can tell he is a fan of the Three Stooges. He has an endless silly streak and has borrowed at least one Stooges’ routine – the double eye-poke/hand protection where Moe tries to poke Shemp or Curly in both eyes at once, and in defense they place a hand between their eyes to stop Moe’s attack. There’s a big fight scene at the beginning of Pedicab Driver that has a couple of characters employing the routine.

It’s also obvious he is a fan of silent slapstick comedians. Buster Keaton seems to loom large in Sammo’s take on comic possibilities.

Sammo’s martial arts training and athleticism began with his friend Jackie Chan at the China Drama Academy, a Peking (or Beijing) opera school that trained students in instrumental music, vocal performance, mime, martial arts, dance and acrobatics. The pair went on to collectively and individually change the nature of Hong Kong cinema.

If you choose to watch chronologically, the collection begins in 1979 with The Magnificent Butcher, which is the only other movie in the collection with a dubbed version. It should be noted the dubbing is comical in itself.

It was directed by Yuen Woo ping, who the previous year set the standard for martial arts comedy with Drunken Master, starring Jackie Chan. It begins with Sammo taking a classic slapstick banana peel pratfall, and it includes another happy drunken martial arts master.

But my favorite scene is a beautifully choreographed “fight” between the leaders of two martial arts schools. Kwan Tak-hing plays Sammo’s master, Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung, a role Tak-hing played close to 80 times. He is magnificent in his schooling of the aggressive rival school head, Master Ko (Hoi-Sang Lee). It’s a masterclass in subtlety and restraint. 

That is followed by Encounters of the Spooky Kind from 1980, directed by and starring Sammo. This is the movie that introduced jiangshi – or hopping vampires – to the martial arts genre. It’s a simple premise – the vampires are dead and suffering from rigor mortis so their joints no longer work, thus they must hop to chase their victims.

Next up is the 1985 My Lucky Stars, which teams Sammo with his China Drama Academy classmates Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao. Chan has a minor role but absolutely steals the movie in several spectacular stunts. It is described as a “rollicking blend of action thrills and lunatic humor.” It is definitely the goofiest movie in the collection.

In 1987 Sammo took a more serious turn with Eastern Condors, a Dirty Dozen-style tale of a group of 12 convicts enlisted to carry out a mission to destroy an American ammo supply depot before the Viet Cong can get to it in post-war Vietnam. Yuen Biao joins his pal Sammo as a wheeler dealer who gets mixed up in the mission. He has some breathtaking action scenes.

The final offering is The Bodyguard from 2016. In all the previous movies, characters refer to Sammo as Fatty and Fatso, but he out-martial arts them all. In The Bodyguard Sammo is not just fat – he is obese, with a giant gut wobbling over his belt. Yet the 62-year-old star is still able to leave a room of victims in his wake. He no longer has the balletic moves of his youth, but he still has speed, and, unlike corpulent Steven Seagal, who doesn’t seem to have many moves left in his repertoire, manages to make it look like he is still kicking ass.

This was my least favorite movies in the collection because Sammo’s character is a very somber guy who does not display the frenetic goofiness that was so appealing in his earlier films.

There’s one fight scene where Sammo is facing a particularly formidable opponent, and we see the concern on his face when he realizes the only way to take this guy down is to use his bulk and fall down with him.

The move works, but Sammo struggles to right his frame and get his 62-year-old knees to bend.

At 73, Sammo Hung is still a force to be reckoned with. Earlier this year he served as jury president of the 18th Asian Film Awards.