Wheels on Meals

1984 action comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A couple of guys who run a food truck help a chubby detective protect a woman who has some stuff going on.

This really takes its time getting to an action sequence. There's a brief, random fight scene where Jackie Chan and Biao Yuen take on a few thugs, and then there's a whole lot of plot and comedy, the former which isn't all that engaging and the latter not all that funny. A car chase--well, a car-and-food-truck chase--works, but car chases isn't exactly the reason I pop a Jackie Chan movie in.

The final twenty minutes or so contain the kinds of stunts and sequences that are exactly the reason I'd pop a Jackie Chan movie in, however. There are acrobatic climbs up castle walls and then a triptych of fighting mayhem with director Samo Hung and a bad guy engaging in sword play while Chan and Yuen show throw their fists and feet and bodies around with this impossible choreography in fights of their own. It's thrilling stuff, and it's easily five times as good as anything else in this movie.

Does Jackie Chan do his own skateboarding in this? I can't remember another movie where he shows off his skateboarding skills, and I couldn't really tell here because there were some shots that made the whole thing look fake.

Speaking of skateboarding, this has a montage with the two fellas and the girl skateboarding around that looks like it's straight out of a Bollywood movie. And I don't mean that in a good way. Or maybe I do mean that in a good way.

If you're overly sensitive to films that find mental illness funny, be aware that this has a scene in a mental institution where a guy laughing at his own jokes, another patient fishing, and a guy who believes he's a clock are, I guess, all supposed to be something to laugh at. It's not a very realistic look at mental illness.

Wheels on Meals is a dumb title.