Review of Kung Fury (2015) by Dillinger P — 29 May 2015

I'm all for retro comedy, homages to genres and abundantly clear pieces of art that clearly dont take themselves in any way seriously. Danger 5, Garth Marenghi, Black Dynamite... But why these pieces of work actually stand out are mostly the reasoning behind why this film just isnt that good.

It could be argued that its not suppose to be... But then why bother making something if you dont want it to be good? So as far as preposterous plot lines go, A cop, who loses his partner to a ninja in Miami 1985, magically turns into a super ninja and decides to go by the name of Kung Fury, taking out robotic arcade machines and scum of the earth alike.

Its not long after that, Hitler has managed to travel forward in time and kill everyone on the police force, leaving Kung Fury no option to travel back through time to eradicate him once and for all. Its fuckin preposterous! Not that I was expecting anything less but this takes the biscuit.

Luckily it does it with just the right amount of tongue and cheek to make it bearable and allowable. Dont get me wrong, there are some genuinely brilliant moments within this short film, the occasional quip, the killer arcade machine going on a rampage and of course the throwbacks to the 80's cartoons and television shows.

But its crammed into a tight running time that allows nobodies character to breathe or progress, fair enough every character is completely 1 dimensional and is suppose to be, but the it literally zero character arcing, very little threat and most importantly zero resolve.

You would honestly be better going back and watching all those classics from the 80's. The film, yet again I know its suppose to, looks like utter shit, even for a standard that is suppose to look shit, it looks really bad.

It's a CGI circus and every trick in the books out to play. CGI stunt work, CGI backgrounds, CGI characters, CGI blood, CGI everything, the irony being that back in the 80's there was NO CGI, so what the fucks it doing in here? Okay, ill admit, somethings are just impossible to do, especially with a tight budget, but surely a director should say to themselves right if I dont have the budget to do this, then lets wait till I do or try and make it work.

The ironic thing is that films made in the 80's that this is riffing on, had tiny budgets, how could it not have been done for real? okay, dinosaurs and lasers and robotic arcade machines are not exactly easy to pull off, but something more practical to believe in, christ even stop motion, would benefit more to this and actually make it more likeable.

Its not well lit, its not that well shot, its completely all in the post production and sadly the only one really in on the joke is the director and lead character. It is what it is, so to bash it to death would be unfair of me, it entertained me for 30 minutes, it had some quirky moments and a couple of genuine laughs here and there.

But to be honest, I've seen black dynamite and garth marenghi and they both do this type of homage comedy, far more justice that this. It will kill 30 minute, repeat viewing is definately not advised.