Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002)

You should all go into this review with the knowledge that I think this movie is very funny. That was your warning. In Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, director/writer/star edits footage from the Chinese kung-fu movie Hu hao shuang xing (Tiger & Crane Fists) of 1976, inserts himself and various other actors into it, and dubs over the entire film himself. It's a pretty impressive feat, and surprisingly well-done, effects-wise. Oedekerk plays a man with incomparable fighting abilities and a special physical mark that identifies him as "The Chosen One". He spends a lot of time training with Master Tang so that he can fight resident badass Master Pain, who is imbued with mad powers and seems to have no weakness. The Chosen One fights various bad guys and suffers various setbacks while starting up a romance with curly-cued and noise-making Ling. Eventually he unravels a plot that goes much higher than Master Pain, and must defeat a whole new enemy.

So the plot obviously isn't much, but that's definitely not the point. The entire movie is chock-full of anachronistic sight-gags, fun with off-sync dubbing, repetitive dialogue, and over-the-top fight choreography. General silliness abounds. You can see it was made with great care, inserted with a lot of funny details that aren't always noticed the first time around. It's the kind of movie that I wouldn't watch all the time, but get a kick out of like once a year. My main criticism is that the first scene, where a baby fights Master Pain, and the scene in which Chosen fights a cow are not really funny, more annoying, yet they were the ones advertised the most, making Kung Pow seem stupider than it is. It's not exceptionally intelligent comedy, but it's generally innovative and most of the humor comes from the silly and unexpected dialogue and not slapstick fighting. If you're in the mood for something that doesn't require much thinking but is surprisingly funny, go for it. Personally, I'm still hoping for a sequel.

4/5