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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.
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."
"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
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.
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
If he really wants to do reviews of films that people might acually use, why doesn't he go see some movies that aren't massive blockbusters? In the past two months, he could have gone to see In The Bedroom, The Royal Tenenbaums, Brotherhood of the Wolf (though I didn't like it), Amelie (best movie of last year, bar none), or Monsters Ball, which are smaller movies that people might acually go see if they read a good review of them. Kung Pow and Orange County have been showing me trailers for two months and they've looked stupid the whole time. Come on, do we really need Katz to do a review of Lord of the Rings? Was anyone NOT going to see it?
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.
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."
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