Most critics come away delighted. The reviews describe a manic, inventive action-comedy, and the praise clusters on Stephen Chow’s imagination: his comic timing, his slapstick, and fight scenes that more than one reviewer describes as a cartoon come to life. Critics repeatedly admire how the film mixes computer effects with practical martial-arts traditions, and how it plays with Hong Kong cinema history alongside Hollywood and Looney Tunes. A few also find it unexpectedly sweet beneath the cartoon violence.
The reservations gather around the story. Several reviewers admit the plot is hard to follow or comes apart after the halfway point, though most treat that as a small price for the set pieces. The spread is wide rather than even: enthusiasm at one end and a single firm rejection at the other. Variety, writing from a festival, finds the film emotionally flat and says the effects-heavy action stands in for character and human drama. Nobody else shares that complaint.