Review of Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002) by Daniel C — 17 Apr 2014

The idea of a martial arts comedy spoof sounded like a good idea on the surface, so Kung Pow! Enter the Fist sounded like it was worth a shot.

But it was a better idea on the surface than it was as a feature length film in the end.

Riding the idea of being a martial arts film spoof, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist has its moments due to the utter randomness in the jokes and the fact that at some moments it is able to choke a laugh out of the viewers. It is full of all the random jokes necessary for a spoof film. Unfortunately, it is not full of the necessary laughs.

Kung Pow! Enter the Fist manages to stretch its single thin joke throughout the course of the entire 81 minute running time which feels a lot longer than it should due to the distinct lack of entertainment value the entire time. While it has some visual appeal due to its colour and lavish scenery as well as some slightly entertaining fight scenes as well as the clever fact that the film was composed out of old footage from the 1976 Kung Fu movie Tiger and Crane Fist as well as new footage, it simply is not up to par to pass as sufficient entertainment.

As the film is Steve Oedekerk's answer to Citizen Kane as he is the writer, director, producer and lead star of the film, all the responsibility for the film's failure ends up falling on him. Despite a surprisingly dedicated lead performance and the fact that his direction of the film gave it a certain appealing visual style, Steve Oederkerk makes the mistake of thinking he is actually a lot funnier than he is in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist and ends up making the feature an extensive and repetitive martial arts comedy which spoofs all the negative elements of the series without doing it well enough to make it entertaining.

One key aspect of the genre that Kung Pow! Enter the Fist spoofs is the poor audio dubbing. When martial arts films are adapted for English-speaking audiences, the dubbing is known for being laughably poor. Unfortunately, due to going into full overkill of the concept in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, Steve Oederkerk ensures that it ends up being rarely a funny idea. I laughed at the use of that joke maybe once, but the rest of the time it was just so repetitive and unfunny that I couldn't stand the sight or sound of it. One mistake is that Kung Pow! Enter the Fist boasts terrible voice actors dubbing the speaking which it attempts to use to humourous effect but massively fails at it because the voices are so annoying and repetitive that it gives a bad name to the entire film. So the simple fact that audio dubbing destroyed the film's comedic success when Steve Oedekerk was attempting to do it satirically is pathetic. Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is less funny for its poor audio dubbing than The Drunken Master was, and in that case the filmmakers were not attempting to do it for comedic effect, so there is the failure.

Also, the writing is just pathetic. None of the jokes spoofing the martial arts genre really have much success. While some of the visual techniques reminiscent of martial arts cinema have some successful moments, the writing simply does not. Playing on commercial humour for American audiences, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist completely detracts from being a successful parody of Asian cinematic material due to the fact that it has the humour of an American sketch show, though not a good one. Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is simply too commercial and unoriginal and defies the roots of its material to succeed as a spoof of the genre, and although it has some occasional success in its jokes and a few good visual techniques, as a whole Kung Pow! Enter the Fist simply plays on the wrong aspects of the genre. It is no surprise why viewer will not have heard of the name Steve Oederkerk or anyone else involved in the production of Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, because this kind of filmmaking does not need to continue on after one example of the film. Spoof films tend to have some decent kind of story direction or genuine parody of specific material, but Kung Pow! Enter the Fist does not know precisely what to parody and ends up spoofing a lot of elements from the series without remembering to make them funny, so Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is just a seriously dumb comedy which fails to live up to Steve Oederkerk's other more substantial success as the writer and director on Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls or as the writer of The Nutty Professor. Kung Pow! Enter the Fist features some of his lesser work.

Though his dedication to the lead character is fairly effective. While his decision to dub himself is ridiculous, his dedication to playing the lead of Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is fairly strong. I mean although the film isn't funny that much, Steve Oederkerk manages to put himself through some fight scenes fairly well and work with the ridiculous material organically. While he isn't as funny as many of the people he has worked with such as Jim Carrey, he does manage to ensure that the material comes to him naturally. He treats the entire movie like the big comedy sketch that it is and never takes it all seriously, so it looks like he has some fun playing the lead in a martial arts comedy spoof even if it is one as bad as Kung Pow! Enter the Fist.

But despite that and some of the positive aspects of the film's visual appeal, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist is ultimately to dim witted and parodies all the wrong aspect of the martial arts film genre to satisfy viewers even if it is occasionally funny in parts.