Kung Fu Hustle's Stephen Chow has many skills.

The sight at the massive Eccles Theatre in Park City, Utah, is one of UGG snow boots and black top hats. Even though it's January 2005, it's a strange winter wardrobe that makes no sense until one watches the musical number at the start of actor/director Stephen Chow's period extravaganza, Kung Fu Hustle.

Then the reason for the top hats becomes immediately clear, although no less strange: The villains of the 1940s epic, the Axe Gang, sport elegant black suits and top hats while dishing out bloody mayhem.

Chow plays Sing, a clumsy lowlife who wants to join the Axes. Everything comes to a head when the gang and their hired killers face off against the residents of a rundown housing project outside Canton, China. Surprisingly, these ordinary inhabitants are also kung fu masters.

Onstage at the Sundance Film Festival premiere of Kung Fu Hustle, Chow removes his hat long enough to offer a soft-spoken welcome. His is the quietest shout-out imaginable. Chow lets his film do the promotional work.

The crowd is loud and enthusiastic soon after the opening action, and they ride along with the film's nonstop laughs and thrills. In fact, Kung Fu Hustle might have achieved the impossible, holding publicists and talent agents in its grip long enough to keep them from reading and sending e-mails on their handheld Blackberries.

Sundance is a place for newcomers and, while Chow is a superstar in his native China and throughout Asia, he is largely unknown to U.S. audiences. If his Sundance reception is an indication of things to come, he is fast capturing the hearts of the world.

"I don't know, I have no idea," Chow says, speaking the afternoon after his Sundance premiere. "Hopefully, yes, it will do well. It's only a prediction, but I think very soon we'll have an idea what will happen."

It's late in a day's worth of interviews, and Chow is with his entourage at a Main Street storefront converted into a corporate-sponsored interview site.

Chow's last film, 2001's Shaolin Soccer, was shown briefly in U.S. art-house theaters. Its story centers on a group of Shaolin monks recruited to help a down-and-out soccer star win a national contest.

Chow considers the film's lackluster release a missed opportunity by its U.S. film company. But he's confident he will make the intended impact with the over-the-top martial arts comedy of Kung Fu Hustle.

Chow's Hong Kong genre of choice is known as "mo lei tau," and its translation means "nonsense comedy." A man is thrown from a window and five seconds later a flowerpot lands on his head. A landlady chases Chow's lowlife character at super speed.

"What is the name of the cartoon? You know, the bird that says, 'beep-beep'"? Chow asks.

He lights up at the answer. "Yes! The Roadrunner."

One knee-jerk reaction sums up Chow as Asia's answer to Jim Carrey. But can you imagine Carrey directing a comedy epic like Kung Fu Hustle, which has the scope of a Charlie Chaplin film complete with period detail and a massive set of the Pig Sty housing project?

Its plot -- Chow co-wrote the script with Tsang Kan Cheong, Lola Huo and Chan Man Keung -- has the emotional heft of classic silent-movie melodrama. Its action resembles other popular martial arts movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero and House of Flying Daggers, but Kung Fu Hustle is laced with slapstick antics and plenty of toilet humor.

Although the story is fantasy, Chow says he draws the characters and situations from his own life.

"My humor comes from everywhere," he says. "It comes from everywhere in my life. American audiences watch Pig Sty and they laugh, and I don't get it. This is where I came from, and I lived in a similar environment when I was a kid.

"This is real life. You put it in a movie, and you make it exaggerated."

Those who discover Chow with Kung Fu Hustle might mistakenly believe it's one of his first films -- but he's been in movies since 1987.

Chow was born in 1962 to Shanghai parents, one of four kids and grew up idolizing Bruce Lee. After graduating from high school in 1982, he applied to the same acting school Lee attended. Chow was initially turned down because he wasn't handsome or talented enough, but he eventually gained admission.

"Bruce Lee means so big to me," he says. "What I'm doing right now as a filmmaker is all because of Bruce Lee. You have those feelings that give your whole life energy. I said I am going to learn from watching his films and do something. I want to be an actor like Bruce Lee, and I learn kung fu like Bruce Lee."

Like his idol, Chow performs his own stunts. More recently, he's become something of a one-man film crew. He produced, directed and scripted Shaolin Soccer and now Kung Fu Hustle. Which begs the question: Are we ready for a new Chaplin, Keaton or Carrey? Someone who looks different and treats comedy with the exuberance of a child?

Kung Fu Hustle is a lifetime's worth of work and preparation. With 49 movies and more to come, Chow can leverage the Sundance buzz to confirm what the rest of the world knows: He is something to treasure. ©