Kung Pow! Enter the FistYou ever had one of those nights where you can't sleep and you turn on the television, and find some old kung fu movie on? But maybe you're too tired to read the subtitles--maybe it doesn't have any for some reason, local access stuff--and you just start riffing, ad libbing the lines you think should be there; that's the basic premise behind Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, a chop-socky, kung-phooey spoof of wu shu-style kung fu flicks and the like. Checking all the right boxes--and coloring far outside the lines--Kung Pow! balances the tightrope between irreverence and homage, a slapstick comedy with everything from "gopher-chucks" to kickboxing bovines, and other non-animal related stuff...but also more animal related stuff, too.
|
|
Already a part of the midnight movie firmament, many stock martial arts films frequently emphasize the action, with a plot there just to hold it in place, not unlike this film. The story goes that a "Chosen One" is born to defeat the "Evil Council" (yes, they're called that), heralded by their scion and overall bad guy, Master Pain/Evil Betty (played by Fei Lung in the original footage, Leo Lee in the additional content). The Chosen One is played with great energy by Steve Oedekerk, who also writes, directs and produces the film--making him a filmmaker on par with other similar auteurs like Orson Welles...or Ed Wood, depending on your opinion of this film. The baby Chosen One--already a savvy fighter, doubled no doubt by the "dancing baby", who had a popular run in the nineties, courtesy of Ally McBeal (look it up)--is orphaned, raised by desert creatures (not unlike a certain Tarzan-like character by one Edgar Rice Burroughs), and he proceeds along a path of vengeance against the man who killed his family. His journey eventually brings him to the martial arts school with a questionable curriculum, headed by the perverse and venerable Master Tang (Hui Lou Chen), where he reveals the secret for which he is continuously harried: Tonguey (as himself), a vestigial entity living on his tongue--it's less gross than I'm making it sound...or maybe not, I don't know. Forced to endure the ceaseless badgering by his inept "rival" Wimp Lo (Lau-Kar Wing), he trains for the day he can confront the assassin of his family, and realize his destiny. To do this, he must temper his talent in the fires of experience and wisdom...and if his token romantic interest, Ling (Ling Ling Tse) has anything to say about it, gasoline, as well.
Like all good satire--and this movie, too--Kung Pow! pokes fun at the tropes and stereotypes of the genre it hangs around, a jester in the gang, acting out of mirth and even outright silliness. Just as we look at the old Seventies-era imports from China--period pieces about revenge and roundhouses--with a smirk at the ridiculousness of twenty-foot standing leaps and flying kicks through shogi screens (or the Chinese equivalent), this film casts a knowing wink at those movies, and gives us an entry to chuckle at those moments, some of which are actually present in the source material for Kung Pow!, a kung fu movie originally titled Tiger and Crane Fist. Steve Oedekerk took select footage from the original film, and edited in not only his own stylistically-similar content to alter the story, but digitally added himself as the lead actor, even dubbing over the varied characters with his own voice, a la Mel Blanc, or Mystery Science Theater 3000. What might look to be a kind of grave robbing of the original is more truthfully a thoughtful--if goofy--representation of Tiger and Crane Fist; honestly, would you have ever seen this movie if you had not watched Kung Pow!? The film is really an act of love, even if it is a kind of perverse love...a Frankenstein's monster kind of love, but love. Savvy viewers will catch moments that seem out of place, or even little visual cues alluding to the greater plot of the Evil Council and the "stars above", and the sequel which will never come; less savvy viewers will be outright told by Whoa (Jennifer Tung), the monomammary martial artist with a balance problem, who tells Chosen One she will see him in the sequel. The added anachronisms like product placement by Taco Bell and Hooters, the oodles of sight gags--personal favorite involving Evil Betty as a magician, turning the mayor's clothes from red to black at each different cutaway--and all the ridiculous bad dubbing--even the dog, or the "ventriloquists"--give the film a unique kind of charm, a made-to-order B-movie cult classic, one which remains altogether good-natured. Kung Pow! is a charming spoof with a heart, even when the heart is with that guy's stomach blood on the ground back there.
Recommended for: Fans of a goofy, slapstick comedy spoof of martial arts flicks flecked with dust and debris on the film stock, shoddy dubbing eliciting more laughs than pathos, and something you will end up quoting over and over until your friends threaten to stop speaking to you unless you desist. What, that's just me?
Like all good satire--and this movie, too--Kung Pow! pokes fun at the tropes and stereotypes of the genre it hangs around, a jester in the gang, acting out of mirth and even outright silliness. Just as we look at the old Seventies-era imports from China--period pieces about revenge and roundhouses--with a smirk at the ridiculousness of twenty-foot standing leaps and flying kicks through shogi screens (or the Chinese equivalent), this film casts a knowing wink at those movies, and gives us an entry to chuckle at those moments, some of which are actually present in the source material for Kung Pow!, a kung fu movie originally titled Tiger and Crane Fist. Steve Oedekerk took select footage from the original film, and edited in not only his own stylistically-similar content to alter the story, but digitally added himself as the lead actor, even dubbing over the varied characters with his own voice, a la Mel Blanc, or Mystery Science Theater 3000. What might look to be a kind of grave robbing of the original is more truthfully a thoughtful--if goofy--representation of Tiger and Crane Fist; honestly, would you have ever seen this movie if you had not watched Kung Pow!? The film is really an act of love, even if it is a kind of perverse love...a Frankenstein's monster kind of love, but love. Savvy viewers will catch moments that seem out of place, or even little visual cues alluding to the greater plot of the Evil Council and the "stars above", and the sequel which will never come; less savvy viewers will be outright told by Whoa (Jennifer Tung), the monomammary martial artist with a balance problem, who tells Chosen One she will see him in the sequel. The added anachronisms like product placement by Taco Bell and Hooters, the oodles of sight gags--personal favorite involving Evil Betty as a magician, turning the mayor's clothes from red to black at each different cutaway--and all the ridiculous bad dubbing--even the dog, or the "ventriloquists"--give the film a unique kind of charm, a made-to-order B-movie cult classic, one which remains altogether good-natured. Kung Pow! is a charming spoof with a heart, even when the heart is with that guy's stomach blood on the ground back there.
Recommended for: Fans of a goofy, slapstick comedy spoof of martial arts flicks flecked with dust and debris on the film stock, shoddy dubbing eliciting more laughs than pathos, and something you will end up quoting over and over until your friends threaten to stop speaking to you unless you desist. What, that's just me?