Charlie Chan (1972)
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Cartoon Animal |
Outfit: Business suit / matching derby hat / necktie / high fertility rate / orders to kill James Bond
Tagline: "Thank you so much."
Plot summary: Hi, I'm the Amazing Chan. I hope you don't mind that I brought along 40,000 CHINESE CHILDREN
From the mid-1920s to the late '40s, 20th Century Fox produced several dozen full-length films starring the pudgy, yet quick-footed Charlie Chan, a detective for the Honolulu Police Department. Though we hardly ever saw Chan actually doing any work in Honolulu. He was always solving other people's mysteries while on vacation or something. It'd always be Charlie Chan in Paris, Charlie Chan in Egypt, Charlie Chan at the Circus, Charlie Chan at the Olympics, Charlie Chan at that Lacrosse Party at Duke, Charlie Chain in "Too Cool to Fool", or Charlie Chan Does Not Understand the Words Coming Out of Chris Tucker's Mouth. He'd already been in almost 20 movies before he actually decided to solve a mystery in Honolulu. How long has he been employed that he gets about nine months of paid vacation? Maybe that's one of the perks of living in a tourist attraction city. You get lots of time to get away from everybody else's vacation.
In the films, Chan was accompanied on his cases by one or two of his sons, whose primary roles were to get in their pop's way & fuck things up. Decades after everybody stopped caring, Hanna-Barbera decided that the best way to bring Charlie Chan to a new, hipper generation was to give him ten of his kids to get in his way & fuck things up. And occasionally be in a rock band that sounded kind of like the Archies. Only I guess they had a bit of a hard time pronouncing the R.
Ten kids. Charlie Chan has the most powerful sperm in the entire Pacific & is known as the legendary Fuckin Master. Or maybe he just married an Irish Catholic. We don't really see his wife at all in the show, probably because she's sitting at home & shutting her pie hole like a good baby machine. But all ten kids were in EVERY EPISODE, allowing for a variety of character traits to be spread out among them. The number one son was the responsible leader type, & as such wore a sweater only his mother would pick out & drove the rest of them around in a van. Then you had the clumsy fat kid, the kid in the disco pants & popped collar, the smart kid who did some calculations & accorded to them, the hip jokester with a crazy name like Flip, the tomboy with pushed-up baseball sleeves & the voice of 11-year-old JODIE FOSTER, & the teen girl who looked exactly like Daphne. Except, you know, Chinese. And they all had traditional Asian names like Tom, Henry, Mimi & Scooter, & then you had a few rhyming ones, like Anne & Stan. And a dog named Chu Chu. If Charlie Chan worked for the Honolulu Education Department, the dog's name would be Throw The Gum Out. (more)
User comments: Charlie Chan's comeback is puzzling at best. The early '70s never seemed like a period of time when people were waxing nostalgic, especially not for some black & white mystery movies from the '30s starring some fat Chinese guy. It reminds me of when they made that Little Nemo game for the NES. Nobody was clambering for a video game about a kid in his jammies from a barely popular, turn-of-the-century comic book. And yet the game enjoyed a decent amount of success. Unfortunately, there was nothing amazing about the Amazing Chan or the Chan Clan, & it didn't have the same joy luck.
It is notable, however, that the voice of Charlie Chan was provided by Keye Luke, the old shop master from Gremlins, & the first Chinese person to play Charlie Chan. Character's been around for like FIFTY YEARS & they couldn't find a Chinese actor to play him. In the movies, Chan had been played predominantly by an actor from Sweden, who eventually died & was replaced by a guy from KANSAS who was fat like Chan, but looked more like a combination between Mr. Belvedere & me in the 7th grade when I first got glasses but didn't like wearing them so instead I just walked around squinting at everything. Oh, but have this guy grow a mustache & add an extra "ah" syllable after every word & BAM, instant Chinaman! So pre-Taxi Driver Jodie Foster as the voice for one of the Chan-chan-chickabees doesn't seem like so much of a stretch now.
To conclude, Charlie Chan is so fat, he has more chins than his own phone book.
User Rating: 
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