| OK. True confession time. People, gather ’round and listen carefully, because this is not easy for me to say.
The movie Kung Pow! Enter the Fist (2002) makes me laugh my butt off.
Deep breath – exhale. There! That wasn’t so hard. I feel cleansed – purified even by revealing such an embarrassing truth. But there it is. Steve Oedekerk’s ludicrous martial arts parody is a guilty treat that I can watch over and over again, enjoying it every time. Yes, I’m talking about the same Steve Oedekerk who wrote Patch Adams (1998) and who is responsible for all those weird little thumb movie parodies like Thumb Wars (1999) and Thumbtanic (2002), and yes, I’m still sure I like this movie.
For those who don’t know, Kung Pow started out as a 1977 martial arts epic called Tiger and Crane Fists starring Jimmy Wang Yu. It was a fairly typical revenge melodrama for Hong Kong at the time, and had the usual clichéd plot, creative violence and bad English dubbing we all expect from the genre. Oedekerk seized on the idea of redubbing the film once again, this time into a ridiculous comedy, a la Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). Dialogue was replaced with non-sequitur gags, additional footage was shot, and Oedekerk even managed to digitally superimpose his head onto Jimmy Wang Yu’s body. The plot was pureed into an unrecognizable goop about a warrior called "The Chosen One," an invulnerable villain who suddenly changes his name to "Betty," space aliens, kickboxing cattle, and whatever other bizarre ideas entered Oedekerk’s head.
I’ll be the first to admit that three out of every four gags fall flat – but the jokes that do work make me bellow with laughter. None of the gags (good or bad) make any sense whatsoever –– that’s the beauty of it. Everything that happens in Kung Pow comes out of nowhere and means absolutely nothing. I have no idea why the villain employs a chubby henchman with a beat box, who hangs around in the background of fight scenes grooving to Ram Jam and Sir Mix-A-Lot. Furthermore, I have no idea why it’s so funny. It just is. In order to enjoy Kung Pow, you’ll have to expect the story to make no sense, and expect most of the jokes to fail. If you do this, you’re much more likely to leave the movie feeling dizzy with joy, as I did.
For those fans who appreciate Oedekerk’s random sense of humour, the Chosen Edition DVD is a fantastic treat. It’s cheap (less than 10 bucks), readily available, and contains some of the most enjoyable bonus features I’ve seen in a parody of this sort, all of which are perfectly in sync with the film’s twisted sensibilities. There’s the alternate "What were they really saying?" track, in which the dialogue is a bunch of pure nonsense that Steve made up at two in the night the morning before, so that the cast’s mouth movements would be appropriately out-of-sync with the final dialogue. This is the track that reveals that during a tender love scene, Steve is actually mouthing the words "I am the potato man! You know that it’s true!" Another audio track is the "Books on Tape" track, in which every word, song and silly noise is recited by a dignified chap with a British accent. Then there’s the actual director’s commentary, deleted scenes and an animatic of the computer generated cow battle. Even the main menu is funny.
It’s definitely not a movie for everybody, but if you’ve ever found yourself laughing at cheesy kung fu flicks from the ’70s, you owe it to yourself to at least give Kung Pow a try. It’s becoming less and less likely that we’ll ever see a movie like this again. |
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