Next up in Eureka Entertainment’s noble ongoing mission to bring all the great Jackie Chan movies to Blu-ray, it’s one of the key films (another being Project A, also released by Eureka last year) which the Hong Kong legend made alongside longtime collaborators Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung. The careers of all three men have had more than their share of idiosyncrasies, so it’s saying something that Wheels on Meals is among the quirkiest entries on their collective CV. This quirkiness should be evident right away from the title – reportedly changed from the more logical Meals on Wheels at the behest of studio Golden Harvest, who feared titles starting with ‘M’ were unlucky after the critical and commercial failure of western co-productions Megaforce and Ménage à Trois (AKA Better Late Than Never) – through to the central premise of two Chinese guys running a food truck in Barcelona, who somehow wind up the sworn protectors of a mysterious young woman being threatened by shady criminal forces.
Thomas (Chan) and David (Biao) are the aforementioned food truck guys, who make their living feeding the crowds on the streets of Barcelona. As well as utilising their cooking skills in their all-in-one kitchen/vehicle, the job sees them wait tables on skateboards, and when things get particularly fraught they also have their martial arts expertise to draw on. Circumstances see the duo meet the elegant Sylvia (Lola Forner, also seen in Project A and Armour of God), with whom they’re both immediately smitten. However, Sylvia promptly proves to be a great deal more trouble than they expected, as, on top of being a prostitute and a pickpocket, she also seems to have bad guys on her trail, who want a lot more than their wallets back. Just why these villains are after Sylvia, none of them know – but it might have something to do with the case assigned to bumbling private investigator Moby (Hung, sporting a curly perm and dress sense that makes him look like a proper 1980s scouser. All that’s missing is the moustache and the tendency to say “calm down, calm down.”)
It’s a goofy premise and no mistaking, and it makes for no shortage of suitably slapsticky shenanigans. The opening act feels less like a set-up, more a loosely assembled series of comedy sketches of the sort that dominated British TV around the time. Take Yuen Biao getting distracted by a pretty girl whilst washing the truck, then unwittingly throwing his bucket of water in the face of a passing policeman. We might easily envisage Benny Hill or Kenny Everett pulling off a similar gag, only it’s rather less likely we’d have seen either of those men showing off eye-popping Kung Fu moves and ripped torsos mere moments earlier. This pre-PC comedic sensibility is heavily in force throughout, with abundant fat guy jokes made at the expense of Sammo (who, we ought to mention, also directs here), scenes in a mental institute played for laughs, and Jackie and Yuen struggling to protect their philandering Italian neighbour from his homicidally jealous wife. Naturally this lack of political correctness extends to the representation of Lola Forner’s female lead: a shrewd and callous manipulator of men, yet at the same time an utterly hapless damsel in distress perpetually in need of protection.
Still, if you’re looking for progressive attitudes in a 1980s Hong Kong action comedy, you’re quite clearly barking up the wrong tree. These are films that balance cartoonish humour with incredible feats of physical daring, and whilst in this instance the comedic elements might leave a bit of a bad taste in the mouth, the action should more than make amends. Wheels on Meals has fights, stunts and car chases galore on the streets of Barcelona, all pulled off as expertly with as little regard for the well-being of the performers as anything the central trio ever shot on their own soil. Most memorable, though – and most outlandish given how things build up to it – is the grand finale, which sees our heroes stage an assault on a castle. While this is a great showcase for all three men – Sammo has a great fencing match, whilst Yuen showcases his acrobatic ability battling through a room filled with leather armchairs – this whole sequence is most notable for sporting one of Jackie’s most celebrated fights against Benny ‘The Jet’ Urquidez. This lengthy one-on-one seems heavily indebted in spirit to the similarly iconic fight between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris in Way of the Dragon, and perhaps it’s for this reason that the battle is played surprisingly straight and hard-edged, with precious little of Jackie’s signature humour. Tonally, this might jar just a little with the rest of the movie, but damned if it isn’t one of the most exciting and memorable moments of Jackie’s filmography, and clearly the highlight of Urquidez’s acting career.
Wheels on Meals is an odd mish-mash that might not stand up that well to critical scrutiny, but like most other Hong Kong productions of the era, it’s readily apparent that it wasn’t made with critics in mind. There’s an infectious sense of fun about it all, and the silliness is very much part of that. Hang up your hang ups, get into the spirit of things, and there’s no reason not to have a great time. Not that existing devotees of Jackie and co will need any further persuasion to snap it up; and I’m happy to report that Eureka continue to do a great job bringing these movies to Blu-ray. It looks and sounds great, with options to watch with the original Cantonese dub and soundtrack plus the alternate international soundtrack (familiar from the UK VHS release), the original English dub and an alternate 2006 English dub, interviews with Sammo Hung, Benny Urquidez and Keith Vitali. Plus we get the end credits from the Japanese cut, under the somewhat tougher-sounding title Spartan X, which is notable both for the fact that it launched the popular Spartan X video game series in Asia, and also for being the first instance of out-takes used over the end titles of a Jackie Chan movie.
Wheels on Meals is available now on Blu-ray from Eureka.