While still an infant, the Chosen One’s family is murdered by Betty, a member of the Evil Council. The Chosen One defends himself and escapes by rolling down a hill. He grows up to avenge the death of his family and discovers a galactic plot to overthrow the earth.
There has been a lot of hype about this film and none of it good. In truth, Steve Oedekerk deserves credit for doing what no one has done before even if the final result is somewhat hideous.
The premise is intriguing. Take an average 1976 kung fu film titled Savage Killers starring Jimmy Wang Yu, re-shoot half the film with new footage of fighting cows, babies, and flying Frenchmen in gaudy pyramids. Put your face on Wang’s body to become the lead and re-dub the entire film with wacky dialogue and a series of odd noises. Ok, maybe its not so intriguing as insane but it certainly has potential. The humor is surreal in the Monty Python vein, although no where nearly as well executed. But, some of the gags admittedly had me chuckling. Unfortunately, they didn’t stop when they should have. The film pokes fun at all sorts of obvious kung fu conventions such as poor dubbing, overly dramatic zoom-ins, cheesy death scenes, and corny flashbacks. In an interview, Oedekerk stated he watched over a hundred films in selecting the right one. He obviously knew his material but didn’t have the good judgment to know when the joke was dead in the water. In short, the film lacks enough creativity and therefore runs out of material before its even half way through. Oh, sure the wacky plot continues but there isn’t anything particularly engaging anymore.
The infamous cow fight that apes The Matrix and the Bruce Lee “gopher chucks” scene basically reveals the filmmaker’s limited vision. Instead of trying to work more original spoofs into the film, he goes straight for the tired, old standbys. The film itself is a unique idea. Only Woody Allen’s What’s Up Tiger Lily has bothered to take a Chinese film and re-edit it into a comedy. Oedekerk took the premise much further, employing CGI effects and even purposely degrading the quality of newly shot footage to match the original film’s print. Technically, this is all done quite well for a low budget comedy. The Taco Bell scene and the boom box guy are definite highlights where the effects and humor work well together. Seeing a bunch of Chinese martial arts students sitting around eating Taco Bell food as the instructor sings the restaurant’s praises is terrific. Vaguely poking fun at kung fu styles, “Betty” the main villain has a guy with a boom box follow him around playing old rap tunes while he fights. While quite amusing, this is about as funny as the film gets.
The end of the film features a before-and-after set of shots showing what several original scenes looked like before they were edited. This is the only time you get to see Jimmy Wang Yu. Following, are the credits and staged outtakes which are not worth sticking around for as they’re even less entertaining than the film itself which is saying a lot.
Kung Pow is a bad movie by any standard. There are a few genuinely funny bits but they’re ruined by the sheer banality of the majority of the film’s humor, plus the tiresome repetition. For genre fans, Oedekerk wastes jokes on blatant references to American pop culture and fails to fully capitalize on the potential humor of bad kung fu. Where’s the evil monk with white eyebrows? Gaudy uniforms? And no one says “but still” even once!
by Mark PollardRelated Topics:
Genre: Kung Fu
