 |
| Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002) |
One thing that's important to remember going in is that this movie is at least partly comprised of old footage from a 1976 Hong Kong martial arts film called Tiger & Crane Fists or Savage Killers. I can't speak to the quality of that movie, as I've never seen it, and I'm not sure how much of this movie's plot is borrowed from the original source material. For the purposes of this review, I'm largely going to stick to the original content from Kung Pow itself. I may mention a few performances here and there, but otherwise, anything I talk about in this review, I will credit to Kung Pow since, shockingly, I really don't know which clips belong to which movie some of the time. I mean, in some cases, obviously certain scenes are Kung Pow originals, like the scene where he fights a cow, for example, but the movie does a surprisingly good job of blending Steve Oedekerk into the original film, and there are some shots I was certain were made specifically for this film before the credits sequence showed how they inserted Steve in. The fact that I was so impressed by certain moments just made it all the more obvious, however, when they simply uses a crude green screen insert.
 |
| Steve Oedekerk as The Chosen One |
The writing in this movie is some of the sharpest I've seen in a satire, or even a comedy, period. There are a lot of really great jokes here, and they don't always go the obvious route. Going back to the cow scene, as soon as the cow started fighting by squirting its milk at The Chosen One, I was worried that would just be the whole joke, but it's not. They get a lot of material out of it, as a less intelligent satire would have just left the joke as 'The cow squirts milk on him'. They also get a lot of great material out of content from the original movie itself. There are certain jokes that play off the action off what's happening on screen, and a lot of them flat out ignore the context of what would be happening in the original story at that moment, but others certainly don't. I need to know what was happening in the original movie where the guy is dying in the bed and the other guy just keeps rubbing his chest. That needs an explanation. In general, the movie satirizes the martial arts genre really well. It hits a lot of the basic story beats, follows the typical 'Chosen One' narrative well enough, and lampoons enough of the tropes to hit that sweet spot a satire like this really needs to hit, where it makes fun of the typical cliches of the martial arts genre, but it's all coming from a place of respect. Even the fight scenes are hilariously choreographed. They're fast, energetic and completely silly. The entire movie can be summed up like that, actually. There's jokes coming at you constantly, so even if the odd joke doesn't land, the movie just carries on to the next joke like it wasn't even there. That's the power of a good comedy: it can make you forget when it's not doing its job.
 |
| Ling Ling Tse as Ling |
I was all ready to go off about how obvious a lot of the dubbing is. From the first scene, it's completely apparent that not only are the lines dubbed, but that the voices really don't match the characters. Then, Steve Oedekerk opens his mouth and he's also dubbed and the whole thing becomes abundantly clear. It's meant to be like that. It's another satire of the horrendous dubbing seen in a lot of foreign movies. It takes a bit of getting used to, especially to commit to it for an entire feature film, but it really works for the script. Steve Oedekerk does the dubbing for pretty much every character, and he manages to get a lot of range out of his performance here. Every character has basically the right voice for the material and the wrong voice for the original actor's portrayal, even, strangely, his own, which, again, just makes the whole thing even better. It's not worth commenting on the way he portrays his own character; just like everything else in the movie, it's wonderfully over-the-top and ridiculous. The only actor that gets a unique dubbing is Jennifer Tung, who plays Whoa who, I'm pretty sure, is an original character for this movie. I know I said the line was a little blurry, but this is another instance where I'm pretty sure this was an original creation. Anyway, she does well in her role, although the inclusion of her character makes the need for... Mu-Shu Fasa a little redundant, since both characters play the same kind of character. You could have just had Whoa appear in that one scene to talk about the 'stars above' or whatever; adding another character like that just made the whole thing a little bloated.
 |
| Jennifer Tung as Whoa |
In a movie like this, I usually reserve the final paragraph for the things I didn't like about the movie, but this is where I come back to that 'throwing all the rules for critiquing out the window' thing I mentioned before. For the most part, anything that could be seen as 'bad' about the movie actually ended up enhancing the experience overall. It goes hand-in-hand with the kind of movie this is. The crappy CGI? It had to be that way. The poor dubbing? Already brought it up. The bad green screening? Adds to the charm. From the outset, the movie lets you know that this isn't going to be the highest form of cinema and so doesn't even try to be. Even when things are 'bad', everything has a purpose and was done so for a reason. At the end of the day, the only things I can nitpick are the moments when the film breaks its own internal logic. I mentioned the Mu-Shu Fasa rendundancy, but there's also the moments where the original actor for whoever 'The Chosen One' replaced in this film is clearly still there and when Oedekerk hadn't refilmed certain shots. Those are mainly present in wide shots, but it was still noticeable in some areas. Even still, that's not a big list of negatives. And yet, critics gave this movie an 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, this isn't a 100% movie, it's not for everyone, but 11%? I hate to say 'they just didn't get the point', but they just didn't get the point. The fact that it is so stupid and non-sensical and 'bad' is why it's so amazing.
 |
| Fei Lung as Betty |
Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002) is genuinely one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had watching a movie. There's certainly better films out there, but for what this movie is, it's in a league of its own. Critically, I have to rate it a little lower than what I know in my heart the movie means to me subjectively, but I feel like I'm being fair enough on both counts. 9/10.
No comments:
Post a Comment