'China' a campy, roller-coaster kind of romp Are you ready for a movie that's accurately billed as an "action/adventure/comedy/kung- fu/monster/ghost story"? Fine. Then climb aboard Jack Burton's Pork Chop Express as he wheels his semi-trailer into San •Francisco's wholesale market and Big Trouble in Little China. This is no tame tale of piggies going to market. The last porker has barely been pulled from Jack's truck when he's whisked into Chinatown's labyrinth underground and given a crash course in Chinese mythology. Prepare to visit the River of Ashes, the Mansion of the Disloyal, The Iron Basin and The Great Arcade where Jack meets an evil 2,258-year-old Mandarin lord who can transform himself from a hairless old duffer into a 7-foot-tall warrior. The spirit plans to marry a green-eyed maiden Jack's buddy's girlfriend - because she unknowingly possesses the power to free him from an ancient curse. Confused? Good. It gets more complicated, and that's the joy of By HAL LIPPER St. Petersburg Times Film Critic movie Big Trouble in Little China *** Cast: Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, Dennis Dun, James Hong, Victor Wong Director: John Carpenter Screenplay: W.D. Richter Rating: PG-13 Running Time: 100 minutes Theaters: Tyrone Square 6, Movies at Pinellas Park, Movies at Largo, Sunshine Mall 5 Excellent Very good Good Mediocre Poor Twentieth Century Fox Kim Cattrall and Kurt Russell escape their captors through a subterranean aqueduct. John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China, a campy, convoluted series of outrageous adventures that careens through an imaginary world for two hours before depositing you, breathless, back in your seat. We're not talking art. We're talking heavy-artillery violence, hairy beasts and Chinese grandmasters who burst through walls on bolts of lightning. We're talking Chinese street gangs, sewer monsters and Oriental herbal potions that might be misconstrued as racist fantasies if the movie weren't a camp send-up from Frame One. Big Trouble in Little China hardly is flawless. But it moves with the urgency of Carpenter's best work (Halloween, Starman and the overly graphic The Thing) and the offbeat humor of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. (The similarity to Buckaroo Banzai is no surprise. Buckaroo's director, W. D. Richter, re-wrote Big Trouble's screenplay.) Please see CHINA 3-D
