Review of Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002) by Phil B — 10 Jul 2008

This is an interesting one. On one level this is a terrible film. As you watch it's obvious that the plot is nigh-on irrelevant for the duration, and this does make it pretty non-immersive and slightly annoying.

On another level, some of the dialog is so silly it's actually very amusing. Admittedly, sometimes I was left thinking, "Actually, I could probably write this stuff myself", but that didn't stop relatively frequent sniggers and chuckles.

The only difficulty was that amid the chuckles was still an underlying boredom. I very much doubt I'll sit through it ever again, but it wasn't the worst film I've ever seen. But in a way, it didn't feel like a film at all.

More of a barrage of very silly jokes. What perhaps ought to be mentioned though, is that a fair amount of the film is based on old 70s martial arts film footage. The main character has been very successfully grafted into the footage in a very seamless way.

So technically, there's probably a whole lot of clever stuff going on, and it does aim to achieve something which few (maybe no) other film has or ever will again. Although, actually, apparently there's a sequel, so I guess there's going to be at least two of these oddities lurking about.

Would I recommend it? Mmmmm. Probably not. If you're really into serious martial arts flicks, then maybe it'll amuse you more than it amused me, but otherwise, I wouldn't make this one a priority if I were you.