It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time: Kung Pow: Enter The Fist (2002)

“It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” is a series that focuses on movies that either have a bad critical reputation, bombed in the box office or serve as guilty pleasures. It will largely focus on genre movies, though I will venture outside of that area.

Like most cult movies, some comedies become favorites by the time they hit home video. The likes of “Office Space”, “Pootie Tang”, “Black Dynamite” and even (to a lesser extent) “Not Another Teen Movie” and “Grandma’s Boy” fail to become a big hit in theaters, but overtime find a more enthusiastic audience once viewers can watch them at the comfort at their own homes.

Out of these movies, the least likely director and writer of such a cult favorite was Steve Oedekerk. An comedic writer/director/actor whose credits include “Ace Venture: When Nature Calls”, “Evan Almighty” and “Patch Adams” (the third one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen), as well as the “Star Wars” parody “Thumb Wars”, he’s a guy that seems to just scream hack. However, he wanted to have a star vehicle. Said star vehicle was a parody of old marital arts films (basically, he took an older film called “Tiger Crane and Fist”, rewrote it, inserted himself into it, and filmed new footage) called “Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.” The film was torn to shreds by critics (it currently stands at 14% on Metacritic) and was only a moderate hit (it made nearly $17 million on a $10 million dollar budget.) In short, it seemed like it would be forgotten.

However, that’s not what happened. I remember a year later going on a message board for some website (I forget what it was-it’s most likely gone by now anyways), and people were in love with this movie. Amazed, I went several other places (including newsgroups-remember those?) and IMDB. Whilst it didn’t have the highest rating (4 or 5 something out of 10), those that enjoyed it really loved it. It had gone from being another bomb to a cult item in the span of a year. Finally, I decided, “fuck it, I’ll watch it.” I can’t say I fell in love with it, but it was by far better than I thought it would be.

 The film begins with the family of a baby being killed, and their assassins getting their ass handed to them by said baby. I do want to mention that I realized this movie isn’t too bad the moment a woman finds the baby, picks it up, and then lets it down so it can roll down a rocky hill. Anyways, the kid grows up to be a man known only as “The Chosen One” (Oedekerk), who has spent most of his life training and searching for those that killed his parents.

Chosen one enters a town, and meets with a sickly and rather crazy man named Master Tang, who agrees to let him train in his dojo after Chosen One reveals his identity mark, a smiling face on his tongue named Tonguey. In the process, he finds himself training with Tang’s two students-Ling, who bluntly says she wants to have sex with him (and makes a really annoying noise whenever she cries, gets excited, or basically whenever) and Wimp Lo, a wimpy loser who thinks he’s a tough guy and brags about how he “can go pee pee standing up.”

Things soon take a turn of sorts, when Master Pain and his henchmen come to the village and beat people up (the man greeting him thanks him for doing this-one of many amusing one liners and asides.) Why has he come to the village? Why, to tell an awful joke and let everyone know that from here on out, he will be known as “Betty.” Chosen one isn’t going to take this though, because this is not only the man who killed his parents-he also knows that Betty is a girl’s name. After pointing this out, Betty singles him out. Can Chosen One finally defeat his nemesis? Will Chosen One finally defeat his arch nemesis? Can Wimp Lo finally learn how to fight? What’s with the woman with one breast? Will Ling’s father finally find a Radio Shack?

To be honest, “Kung Pow” works about 65% of the time, and when the jokes bomb, they bomb badly. The worst offenders are a fight with a cow that contains a “Matrix” spoof that was tired by the time “Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo” came out, as well as a random man who pops up to play songs like “Baby Got Back” on a boom box during fight scenes because rap is supposed to be funny in the director’s eyes. That and a rather lame plot twist near the end involving the French. Its moments like these that you wish someone had taken Oedekerk aside to let him know when a joke isn’t funny.

However, when it hits, it’s either amusing or knee slapping levels funny. The movie is filled with great quotes, random asides (a group of children happily chanting “We’re children! We’re children!”) and moments that are so random and bizarre (a Taco Bell product placement that also pokes fun at the mere idea of  product placement in a movie) that win me over. It also helps that you can tell Oedekirk genuinely loves the movie’s he’s spoofing. This isn’t some lame parody where the people behind it clearly look down at such things. It’s actually a surprisingly nifty homage to the world of martial arts movies. Also, I don’t care what anyone says, the intentionally bad dubbing is hilarious.

It’s biggest triumph of sorts, it that the movie is completely committed to the sheer silliness of its endeavors. This isn’t something like a Friedberg and Seltzer movie in which they throw in a bunch of pop culture references and try to pass them off as jokes (though it occasionally is guilty of this.) It’s actually a labor of love from a guy who really does want to make his audience laugh. Does he succeed all the time? No. However, it’s kind of nice to see a modern spoof that genuinely wants to make you laugh instead of throwing a bunch of crap together and not even putting forth an effort. Stuff like “Movie 43” could actually learn something from this.

I must admit that I’m hesitant to call “Kung Pow: Enter the Fist” a cult classic, as it’s flaws keep it from attaining that status. However, it still hits more than it misses, and I can say it has earned the following it’s attained. It is easily one of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen-and I laugh my ass off every time I watch it.

Next time-“Zombie 3” and the end of Italian horror’s golden years