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Review: Kung Pow
This one should have worked. Oedekerk, writer and director of this mediocrity, is also the star. He uses digital film-editing techniques to insert himself into the older film as the new hero, a creative idea that in better hands could really have been funny.
The Chosen One saw his family killed by the evil Master Pain/Betty and was raised by rodents. He finds his way to Master Tang, then falls in love with Tang's daughter Ling, who speaks in a perpetual whine. The stop-action overdubs and hesitations are funny at first, but then are just headache-inducing. There are a few inspired moments -- I personally loved the karate brawl with the dairy cow -- but the movie derails as he comes closer and closer to his confrontation with Master Pain.
Don't be fooled by the trailers. Every funny scene is in them. There are few movies I can't sit through, but this one was a struggle. It really isn't worth much more discussion, and my best advice would be to skip it altogether.
I saw this movie and... yuck!
I guess I should've known... The previews said "From the director of Ace Ventura 2". I don't know if you've ever seen Ace Ventura 2 or not, but let's just say it sucked.
Go see "A Beautiful Mind" if you haven't already, it is much, much better.
put one positive thing in there? Geez, this guy is blasting the movie without any resentment.
Summary of Review:
The movie sucks.
Everything is mainstream now.
the trailers were tantalizing
No, the trailers were terrible. How anyone could want to see a movie based on those trailers is beyond me. Yet another spoof on The Matrix, this time with a cow? A guy being distracted by a woman with big breasts? And these are the highlights? This was just another me-too addition to the new genre of 'genre parodies' to come out in the last few years, and obviously not an inspired newcomer.
...any movie I would want to see less, given the trailer. On the upside, I am guessing that if I did go see the movie, I wouldn't be disappointed; at least I KNOW it sucks, where these days often the trailer deceives me so......
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
"Let's boycott the MPAA... until there's some idiotic looking spoof movie I really want to see."
Ummmm...Kung Pow Chicken.... Now ya went and made me hungry...
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
"Not worth stealing. Two cds better used to rip John Tesh MP3s and archiving them for eternity"
---Internet piracy council
Papa Legba come and open the gate
My Opinion of the movie: It was probably the worst movie I have ever sat through in a movie theater (never wasted money on Battlefield Earth) but despite how horrible it was I laughed my ass off the entire movie. Now, when a second group of friends invited me to go see it with them, I told them there weren't enough tea in China...
Unfortunately, the former comes along very rarely, and the latter comes around very often. Needless to say, I didn't hold much hope.
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
this is the man who created Thumb Wars...
I LOVED thumb wars. I bought the damn thing on DVD.
Why!? WHY did kung pow have to suck??!
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
So Kung Pow is bad, who'd have guessed?
Was anyone actually considering seeing this movie? I didn't think it looked funny from the previews at all.
spacefem.com
Need to see what I mean? Your review list lately reads like a direct-to-DVD-bargain-box roll call.
Good movies that have come out in that time span:
What's up, Katz? Afraid of actually cutting your teeth on something substantial?
I went to see Kung Pow expecting a low budget spoof of cheezy Kung Fu movies, and that's exactly what I got. This movie obviously wasn't aimed at up-tight no-nothings like Katz, it was meant for Kung Fu fan boys.
Katz's review reminds me of all the bad press Godzilla 2000 got when it came out. People whined about it's crappy plot and terrible special effects... That's the whole point!
Of course a bad review from Katz can do nothing but help the movie out in the box office. Anything that idiot hates must be good.
Enter the Fist had a great premise and the trailers were tantalizing
Hmmmmm, I don't know. Not exactly Cannonball Run.
I personally loved the karate brawl with the dairy cow
You would, Katz, you would...
this guys too hard a critic. I mean, he'd probably give Booty Call 2 a bad review.
Thank you Katz, for sparing us the usual wordy outpouring of ranting pseudo-journalism.
Now though, I realize that there's no subversive intellect. It's just that smart people and dumb people both find the same slapstick humor funny. It doesn't make me smarter than somebody else if I see furter into a dumb joke than they do, because it's still a dumb joke. Just think about it for a second and I'm sure that you will agree.
Keeping
Amongst all all the other faults Katz has (*coughCommie64splayingmoviesinKabulcough*), his movie reviews tend to be nothing if he can't bring out one of his dead horses (Columbine, geek prejudice, globalism) to beat. And even then, it has no actual bearing on the movie review.
And why is this even being reviewed here? Jesus, if Katz can't make at least a tenuous connection with some of his tropes, how does this fit "News For Nerds, Stuff That Matters"?
And, granted that this was likely a horribly bad movie from everything I've seen on it and heard from others, Katz is still supposedly getting paid for this "work," so he can at least put some effort into it. I mean, hell, Mr. Cranky devoted more words to his review.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
I had no urge whatsoever to see this movie. Well, I might have, but the cow scenes in the trailer purged any of those urges from me.
The Matrix came out in 1999. Bullet-time spoofs stopped being funny shortly thereafter. In 2002, they're actually anti-funny; if you're laughing at another funny joke, and you see one, you suddenly stop laughing.
What I keep wondering is how some guy who's written crap like "Patch Adams" got a studio to give him the $$$ and the time to direct, produce and star in his own movie.
Yeah dude, the cow milk Matrix thing, WAY funny. And the chick with one boob? HEEEELARIOUS.
BTW, side note to Hollywood, putting the phrase, "From the director of Ace Ventura 2..." in the trailer isn't going to make people run out and see your crap ass movie.
Dear Policeman, I am God.
I totally agree... the trailer sucked. The comedy seemed stupid, but it wasn't even that "good-stupid" comedy. And yes, the Matrix spoofs have to stop.
"... comdemned to repeat it."
If /. users can contribute book reviews and get them posted, what's to stop us from asking for an equivalent sort of movie review system? I think it would work better than the current Katz monopoly...
sig me a sog
I don't think katz actually saw the movie, I think he got a friend's grumpy grandfather to see it and tell him what it was.
This movie can be compared to one thing, and one thing only:
An entire movie made off of the bruce lee spoof in kentucky fried movie.
If you like naked gun/etc, you'll like this. If you don't, then what the fuck are you seeing a movie called "Kung Pow" for?
Two people walked out in the middle of the movie.
The other 60 of us in the theatre were falling on the floor we were laughing so much!
This movie is about one thing, and one thing only:
PHOTOSHOPPING.
You know all those pictures of person X put into background Y? This is an entire movie of it.
They took an old, REALLY BAD, 1970's kung fu film, and with a TON a greenscreen and computer wizardry, as well as some really bad dubbing, made their own movie out of it.
Only the main character is "real." All of the other people/scenes/etc were from the cheezy old kung fu film. In the credits they show you some of the wizardry (before and after shots) and it's REALLY amazing.
There is tons of changed faces, added people, time change bizzarement.
You know when you and your friends are drunk, 2am, watching a kung fu movie and you start adding your own lines, and acting out parts? That's this movie.
If you're into the photoshopping scene, you've GOT to check out this movie. Maybe wait for dvd if you're not into silly-stupid-drunken-funny humour, but check it out.
I am eagerly awaiting the DVD... I hope they show more of the before/after/in progress stuff. It's amazing to see a scene of the original, then watch it again to see a completely new scene made out of it, with new people/etc added in.
HERE'S MY SCALE OF 1-10 ratings:
SOPHISTICATED WIT: 0
JUST REALLY FUCKING FUNNY: 10
PLOT: N/A
TECHINCAL WIZARDRY: 10
ACTING: N/A
WACKYNESS: 10
MY overall score: 9
Like I said, if you like:
-kentucky fried movie (bruce lee segment)
-naked gun
-crazy mad editing
you'll love this movie.
If you're not into at least 2 of the 3 above, you'll hate it.
Well look at it this way everyone:
...
We only have wait until next year to start seeing Maxtix 2 ripoffs in every other movie. And then by this time in 2004 they wont be cool anymore either
man
No manual entry for
Fist - Hit the Kung Pow.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Perhaps when people that normally find slapstick humor boring catch themselves laughing at these movies, they just have to invent the "subversive intellectual quality" as an excuse.
Crap, is this a subversive intellectual joke that I'm not getting?
Anyway, your claim (assuming the entire post wasn't a joke flying over my radar), is undermined by people NOT finding the same humor funny. There seems to be a subversive, abnormal humor (say abnormal instead of intelligent to avoid loaded value judgments clouding the water) that "regular" people don't get. The best example I know of would be Pokey the Penguin. Normal people look at it and wonder why I'm reading something that looks like it was drawn by a two year old. To fans it's the funniest thing ever made, and all other humor exists in imitation of Pokey the Penguin.
There is certainly some humor that has an abnormal quality, a quality which we dare not say is intelligent but is likely to correllate with intelligence, and a quality which is at least as subversive as all abnormality must be.
I also note that it is possible to see humor in a joke that the originator did not intend--in fact, I've seen humor where the originator intended to have humor in the work he/she would not be aware of! (Sometimes I'm the originator...)
Replace "smarter" in your post with "abnormal" and "dumb" with "normal". Flip the bits of the negations in your second paragraph. (i.e. There IS [obviously] a subversive abnormality. Abnormal people and dumb people do not both find the same slapstick humor funny. It does make me more abnormal than somebody else if I see further into a normal joke then they do.)
Then just think about it for a second and I'm sure that you will agree.
Point to that waste of bandwidth is, I paid for movies that were truly worth it or that I had to see, and I just found something else to do with the rest of my time (as another thread points out, sacrificing one movie pretty much pays for one month of a MMO game). Don't boycott, just be judicious in what you see, and be willing to defend yourself when others try to convince you. Were my friend so strong, I wouldn't have convinced him to see Scary Movie. I still don't think he's fully forgiven me for that night...
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
I agree. Slapstick comedy, when it's alone, no matter how well executed... has no hidden intellectual quality. A guy falling down on his ass, no matter how funny it may be to some is still just a guy falling down on his ass. The difference is when the idiocy of the plot is used to convey some message that is worth talking about. When that message is "Most Kung Foo movies are really bad!" then there's nothing deeper. That should have been obvious from the trailers and from the press around the movie.
I'd say The Simpsons is a whole different monster, though. The Simpsons is satire wrapped in (mostly) funny, over the top comedy. It's not worth teaching a philosophy class over, but for people who can understand the messages behind the shows they are there.
If you need to interpret my post, then you don't get it.
Sure, this movie is not a contender for a Comedy Oscar, but I thought it delivered on what it advertised....
I mean, if you watched the adds, you should have known it wasn't going to be a high dollar flick.
I thought it was one of the best silly films made in a long time. The silly film genre is one of the most overlooked in the history of Hollywood. When have they ever had a "Best Silly Film" award? When has the silly film ever gotten listed as a valid subcategory of Comedy? Granted that most people do not appreciate the wonderful humor in a silly film, but not being one of those people is no reason to criticize.
Shame on you Jon, you should have simply said "the movie is not for me" and gone on with your life.
This is a movie for those of us that are fans of things like MontyPython, The Hitchhikers Guide (the videos), Some of Mel Brooks more offbeat stuff, etc.
If you fit in that group, go see it, If you want to see a spoiler for my favorite gag, scroll down. When you see the spoiler, you'll understand why some people simply can't handle this movie.
Brad
.
.
.
We've all poked fun at the old dubbed japanese movies, where the sound is out of sync with the mouth movements, and this movies pokes fun at that. My favorite gag is a part where the dog barks, but the bark is obviously dubbed and is out of sync.
Not everyone would find that funny, and far too many people would let themselves be put off by its obvious and simple nature. Their loss.
Well, some of you warned me, and you were right.
So... you're saying that before you went to do this impartial review of the movie, you went and listened to how everyone else said it was really bad? Don't you think that might have clouded*cough* your judgement? I mean, people see what they expect to see, and if you were expecting crap, perhaps that's all you saw.
Personally, I haven't seen the movie. But what's the point of having the review at all if the first line of it simply says: I was very prejudiced against this movie before I even saw it, now here's my unbiased review. (Although, most of us recognise that Katz is rarely, if ever, approaching unbiased... but that's a small point).
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
I was expecting to see an utterly stupid spoof of 70's kung-fu movies and that's exactly what I got. It was so stupid it was hilarious. That was the whole point. I laughed my ass off. Was it a great example of cinema? No. Was there any redeeming features of the film? No. Is any of that relevant? No. It was a stupid, funny, enjoyable movie that made no pretense at being meaningful, serious, or containing a "message." It's sheer stupidity was a delight, and it is nice to see something come out of Hollywood that doesn't try to be anything other than silly. Sometimes I don't want to go to a movie to be informed or enlightened. I don't want a wry commentary on this American life. I just want to turn my brain off and be entertained, and this movie delivers. Go see it with a bunch of friends. Your soda will be coming out your nose.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
that most of the comments so far are from people who have NOT seen the movie. I did, last night. It won't win any Academy nominations, and it's not another
Airplane...but it had a theatre full of people of all ages laughing their ass off...I mean, damn near ROTFL. Yes, bullet ducking time warp tricks have been overdone...and yes, I'm a Matrix loyalist, too....but I think Jon was a little too tough on this one. There is wizardry in the production techinques, and enough funny gags to make it worth the 8 bucks. For a different take on the movie (one which I agree with) go to Moviefone and read the Variety review. To read the whole thing, you'll have to do a free 30 day trial of their site.
And Jon....all the funny gags were NOT in the trailers...eg when the peasant woman picks up the baby...and that's in the first 2 minutes.
Ah....but who will Moderate the Meta Moderators?
Next there'll be complaints about realism and plot in Godzilla movies...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Apprently Donald Rumsfeld wants the name of the movie changed to "Kung illegal combatants".
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
We're all supposedly intelligent people here. It is OBVIOUS from the ads that the film is sheer crap (and in fact the studio should be held accountable for the 30 seconds of my life lost to that ad). Why is Katz reviewing such SHEER AND UTTER CRAP? I guess he thinks he looks intelligent by methodically picking apart a bad film. Instead of pointing out the painfully obvious in the hopes of looking insightful, try coming up with some REAL insight on a REAL film.
I saw the Orange County review and wondered why it was posted - this one is a step further in solidifying my theory.
My $0.02 (Canadian)
Steve
Dude, if I haden't wasted all my mod points sending Linux-WINErs to oblivion yesterday, you'd be getting 'em!
You're using her as bait, Master!
I enjoy a stupid funny movie now and again, and I'm guessing Katz does too (he's gone to see this and Orange County in the last while). While I'm not much of a Katz fan, he gives enough information for me to know that this wasn't another "Dumb and Dumber" kind of movie - and that's all we needed to know.
Better than an article on the evils of McDonalds.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Hey, I totally agree with you, I'm not reading /. to be force fed with MORE industrially-produced blockbusters.
/., so why suck 'dem balls and provide them with the free coverage they don't really need?
What's puzzling is that most mainstream medias do cover (favorably!) blockbusters because they are funded by the MPAA through advertising.
It's odd, I didn't see any MPAA ads on
Hmm, and yeah, go see Amelie.
On Friday a coworker of mine brought in a DVD he got from Hong Kong called "Shaolin Soccer". We used it to "test" a defective laptop, and got no real work done for the next hour or so because we couldn't stop laughing.
In a nutshell, the movie is about a group of Shaolin monks who become a soccer (or football, if you prefer) team. Now, I pretty much hate anything sports-related, but that didn't deter my enjoyment of the movie at all. It manages to successfully spoof just about every martial arts cliche in the book, with some direct pokes at Bruce Lee and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
There's nothing deep in this flick- it's pure light-hearted fun. They make great use of special effects and the acting is perfect for a movie of this type. It's in Chinese (with English subtitles available), but most of the comedy is visual.
It's going to be released in the US as "Kung-Fu Soccer".
Oh, as far as Godzilla 2000 goes, I agree with the parent post- if you went in expecting to see a cheesy, campy giant monster movie on the big screen it was a lot of fun.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
It doesn't seem as though many movie critics are acknowledging this as a "true" film. Whereas the majority of recent theatrical releases have already been reviewed at least 40 to 70 times, the Movie Review Query Engine lists only 14 reviews for Kung Pow.
Roger Ebert hasn't released a review for the movie, either. Oh, and all 14 of the reviews are negative. It appears that everything remotely amusing was included in the trailer.
Katz is, for once, correct. Skip the movie; read James Berardinelli's review instead. It's probably more humorous than the actual film.
Do you like German cars?
What a terrible shame to waste the bandwidth with a review, of any kind, about yet another bash 'em in the face and kick 'em in the groin movie. These things were a genre that was past their prime in about 1979. Grow up kiddies and see the light. Try reading a book, ANY book, as obviously the prospects of finding something of iterest, no matter WHAT it is, will be better than a time waster like this. (Alas and alack, now I've contributed to the waste of bandwidth myself!)
I thought the concept had a lot of potential, but from the trailers, it looked way over the top cheezy and stupid. I was kinda tempted to see it, hoping the people who made the trailer were just dumb, but after katz's revew... I dunno.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actualy, I don't think katz is getting paid for posting stuff on here.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Is because it was not screened for critics in the weeks before it opened. Studios usually do this when they know they have a bomb (quality wise) on their hands, and that all the negative reviews that come out before the movie opens will hurt its box office take. If a studio doesn't prescreen a movie, it is usually a sign to stay away, because the studio that fronted the money doesn't have confidence in the movie.
I thought we already went over this.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
All us cool people know the matrix got that bullet slo-mo scene from a Dragonball Z episode.
I'm determined to reclaim my karma. Now, if I can only find a groundbreaking article and something witty to say....
My point was that people that weren't going to see Lord of the Rings aren't going to want to see it because of a review on Slashdot. Some other movies that people haven't seen a million ads for or heard about as much, those are movies where reviews play more influence in the decision to see them. I'd rather see reviews of movies like that then the 400th review of Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars: Episode 2.
I really don't know what Jon Katz was expecting as he walked into the theatre. Personally, I thought this was one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. Some of the gags are just painfully stupid and make you wonder how the ended up in the final cut, but almost all of it was just funny. By taking scenes from older Kung Fu movies and redubbing them with completely different words, the net effect is that of a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 on crack. For instance in one scene, two people walking along clearly not talking, are dubbed to be singing a song "We are ventriloquists". This sort of humor isn't for everyone, but nearly everyone who walked out of the movie when it was over seemed to have enjoyed it as much as I did.
mrcranky gives better reviews than Jon Katz.
To wit:
Director Steve Oedekerk bought the rights to a little-known 1976 martial arts film called "Savage Killers" and has since spent his time splicing himself into the footage, reworking it, and dubbing in new dialogue to create a film that serves no purpose other than to remind us that "Saturday Night Live" isn't the only place where skits run too long.
Then again, this is the guy who also spent a lot of his time making little thumb people by putting his eyes and mouth digitally onto thumbs and creating movies like "Thumb Wars: The Phantom Cuticle," "Thumbtanic," and "The Blair Thumb." It's pretty safe to say that one thumb movie is enough, but Oedekerk doesn't think so and apparently will keep making them until somebody does something unpleasant with his thumbs.
In "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist," Oedekerk is "The Chosen One," a martial artist out to avenge his family's murder. The movie is filled with bad dialogue and low-rent computer effects. There's a fight between "The Chosen One" and a cow. There's a woman with one huge breast. The "love interest" whines like a gopher getting a cold thermometer shoved up its ass.
The film's relatively high amusement factor lasts about 15 minutes, after which any normal person starts wondering whether or not Oedekerk realizes that a 90-minute movie needs more material than he's got. Ironically, the most fun I had in the movie was watching the confused old people walk out after about five minutes, when they realized what they had gotten themselves into. It was kind of like watching nuns walking out of a porn film, not that I'd ever advocate slipping a reel of "Forrest Hump" into the training tapes over at the convent or anything.
Kung Pow - Enter the Fist had a great premise and the trailers were tantalizing
First question: What were you smoking?
Second question: Do you have any left?
This movie is a piece of shit. This surprises you, how? It's just another turd that Hollywood has tried to shove down our throats instead of making a truly intellectual movie that's worth watching.
Fuck them.
I haven't seen the previews, but I just assumed it was gay pr0n...
sic transit gloria mundi
Formula for new "comedy" movie is as follows:
Take overused idea and write part of a script (ad-libbing the rest of it)
Throw in a Matrix parody
Throw in teen sex
Toss in some more random and pointless nudity
Make 3 funny parts, advertise the hell out of them in any previews/promotions (NOTE: You don't have to actually put them in the movie!)
$script =~ s/$content//gi;
Well, you get my point, Little Giants was funnier.
rm -rf
...how does a reader/fan of Slashdot configure it so that Katz's stuff doesn't show up on the home page? I've heard that it's possible, but I don't see anything in the preferences on my page.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Wait, I just heard a bulletin on CNN that after being resurrected, King butchered the mortuary attendants and then did the same to the police who came to investigate...early reports indicate that King has removed the pineal gland of his victims, for reasons that will not become clear until the end of the book.
King has fled into nearby woods, and search efforts have been hampered by an oppressive mist which cloaks an eldritch and unthinkable horror.*
*-King is thought to have been joined by Dead Author H.P.Lovecraft.
"To be fair, I was left completely unsupervised." ~Anon
I'm sorry, you must be mistaken - I wasn't aware that even as much as a small minority actually engaged in such a futile effort as an MPAA boycott. I happen to like a number of artists and movie producers that would be hurt by such an action, and also realize the pointlessness of such a boycott (even if every single slashdot reader actually did boycott and got thirty friends to boycott as well, there would be NO NOTICABLE IMPACT on sales).
Instead, why not engage in productive activities? Dontate to the EFF. Write congressmen about laws you hate. Make sure you explain to everyone you can what the MPAA and cronies are trying to put past everyone. They can be stopped but not by a boycott.
BTW, nice troll.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sometime back in '96 (if memory serves), Steve Odekerk had a one-shot show on NBC, some kind of cyber-stand-up kind of a thing. (I'm a little sketchy on the details.) The name of the show was "steveodekerk.com." Being a mischevious young 2600-writing dork, I looked it up, and found that the domain wasn't registered. Naturally, I registered it. (This was in the heady days of no-cash-down-required domain name registrations.)
:)
A week passed. Nothing happened. Then something minor, but interesting, happened: they changed the name of the show. Now it was "steve.odekerk.com." They'd registered odekerk.com, lacking their own domain name.
That was one of the greatest achievements of my 18-year-old life: getting NBC to change the name of a show. I'm not saying that was a worthwhile endeavor, nor that it was a good or useful thing to do in retrospect, but it sure thrilled me at the time.
-Waldo Jaquith
Horrendously bad movies are as American as Apple Pie and should be enshrined as national treasures.
Does any1 really think the Farrelly, Zucker, Abrams, Lampoon, Martin+Lewis, Stooges, Arbuckle etc movies are that worthy of intellectual discourse within their own period and context? No/Low-brow comedy significantly matures with age partly in tandem with the target audience (which these days is comprised of early teens) and the revealing snapshot of the gutter humour prevalent/tolerated at that time.
Everyone should take a trip to morontown. I highly recommend National Lampoons Vacation.
heh, couldn't resist to make fun of the poster
of that blurb
the commercial makes it pretty clear
the commercial is fugin embarassing to watch
it's so bad
what sucker sees this shitty movie is the only
one deserves to wither under the shitty rain
big business dumping on our civil rights
i curse you
I haven't seen Kung Pow, nor will I most likely... I am curious about the original film though.
I tuned (quite accidentally) into a Kung Fu film on a Sat. afternoon 15 years ago or so and watched a great film about a son studying tattered texts to learn a kung fu style (I think it was crane) to avenge his father. His father's killer used tiger style. The part I thought was great was the practice dummy... When started, marbles would fall through channels in the dummy and the studend would strike in the fashion described in the text. If the form was done correctly, only marbles of a particular color would be collected by the student. In the end, the son defeated the tiger style master only because he had had to improvise the portions of the crane style text that had been damaged. The tiger style master could not predict these new moves.
Anyone who's seen Kung Pow... is this the movie that was used? Thanks!
Don't forget the Deuce Bigalow Matrix parody, which I believe was the first. Which I not only saw but distinctly remember. I feel my personal value ebbing away.
- Abusing babies is not funny
- Abusing cows is not funny
- The "I will explain in the sequel" joke is old
Above all, Oedekerk should assume that his viewers will get the joke the first timeAll the trailers that were on the air here in IL looked uniformly awful. There was nothing to make you want to watch the movie at all. Jon, you must've been nuts to go see that one.
You have to remember: people on /. may be young, but they're generally not stupid. So youth movies may be a good choice for a review, but stupid movies (or at least ones that you can tell from the trailers are stupid) probably aren't. Then again, why do we even have movie reviews on /. anyway?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Does Katz watch every single movie that comes out?! No wonder he doesn't have time to write good editorials. (-:
Rules of Movie Previews:
If it looks dumb, it's sickeningly stupid.
If it sounds great, it'll put you to sleep.
If it looks hilarious, it's definitely not.
If it looks exciting, it has no plot.
If you can't quite figure out the preview, it might be a good movie.
Sure, the movie was no LOTR. It was childish, pretty dumb, and had a number of cliches.
However, the cliches were obviously intentional, there were a few jokes that really were quite funny and original, and there even was a (very rare) bit of brilliance there.
They did one hell of a job melding two old martial arts movies together with a fair bit of greenscreen and CGI to make it a reasonably cohesive whole. The thing is, if you are going to go see this, don't expect a standard movie with typical cut scenes, soundtracks and characterisations. Take it as it is and you'll probably enjoy it.
However, take it seriously and expect to come out of it with some sort of sense of purpose and you'll be disappointed. Go see it with Katz' typical pap of a review in mind and you'll be annoyed at the movie and at Katz.
TheGeek
I didn't want to believe it. I mean, hell, Hong Kong Cinema is typically great in its nuances. But this ... this was crap. Cooked, soaked with gasoline, smeared in your face with ants poured on top. My girlfriend and I ended up walking out of the theatre - quite a feat, considering we're poor. :/
This gets five angry yawns down.
Hey, since there's a link to the filthy critic on the main page, why not ask him to feature his weekly reviews on here? He's funny as hell and critically smart. Eh?
eh...
My 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter insisted that we see this movie. I thought it would play well to the adolescent / pre-adolescent sense of humor, but even they were disappointed. This was indeed an extremely crude attempt at satirizing a genre.
The evening before, I saw "Tampopo," another genre satire (spaghetti western / samauri movie in this case), but subtle and sophisticated instead. Highly recommended.
Live in the Future; It's Just Starting Now!
I would recommend seeing "High Strung" and maybe "Thumb Wars" or the "Ace Ventura" movies, then making a judgment on "Kung Pow". Put the movie in the context it should be in and maybe you won't think it's that bad...
But if you do nothing else, see "High Strung"... it's worth it.
Wow! This must be a PERSONAL letter, just for me!
what makes slapstick funny is something a little bit more that that. The act of punching somebody just isn't funny, but some other, deeper thing, something that can't be put into words very easy. People who make films sometimes figure it out, and make monty python. Other, make home alone. Maybe later, after enough home alones, the hidden element to hitting somebody and making it funny will be found.
Before anyone jumps all over me for buying DVDs in light of CSS et al, consider that it costs less to license a copy of the movie for repeated perusal than it costs to license a single non-interuptable view of the movie in a venue that is not comfortable, not private and has poor technical quality. I'd rather watch a movie on my own home theatre setup than on the gargantuan screens at the local multiplex. It's just that simple. The only time I consider paying to view a movie in a theatre is either
I know that it makes me an old grump, but you know, in this age of $12++ tickets, the least I deserve is a clean theatre and a film that is not dusty, has been spliced with something other than Red Green's Duct Tape and a projectionist who knows what the "focus" knob is for.
End Rant.