Kung Pow: Enter the Fist – Review

Kung Pow- Enter the Fist is a parody movie. Wait…do not run away just yet. Unlike the mass of lackluster parody movies that are produced these days, this movie is actually very funny. Its vehicle is that it uses old footage of kung fu films such as Enter the Dragan and overlays its modern content onto them. Plus add intentionally bad dubbing and you have a movie which never for a second tries to be subtle, ingenious, or intelligent. It’s clear that Steve Oedekerk and crew prided themselves on this movie making little or no sense at all. Oedekerk had himself digitally inserted into dozens of existing scenes from other older movies simply because he could and it looked ridiculous.

Clever editing of a 1977 kung-fu movie ‘Tiger and Crane Fists’ and the insertion of zany new scenes is what this movie is. The jokes can only be appreciated by those with either a sick, twisted sense of humor or an open mind. The biggest cause of the trouble is a Mr “Betty” Pain, a man whose iron claws, triangular studs and boombox tunes make him virtually invincible. To top it all off, he is a master magician, and can make his associates clothes change colors halfway during a scene. Everytime I thought the movie might drag a little bit, up came something new, stupid, and usually side-splitting.

This is the kind of goofy movie that lets you break out the popcorn, sit on the bedroom floor with a bunch of friends, and just laugh your heads off for an hour and a half. The jokes are both clever and wonderfully stupid. They will amuse, enthuse and most of all get you to laugh hysterically and remember the characters for their funny voices, silliness, and originality. There are so many gags worth mentioning in this movie that it’s best just to see it for oneself. Supposedly the voices were originally going to be done by several different people, but his crew laughed so hard at the voices Steve Oedekerk was using to show them what he was looking for that he decided to do it himself. Nice touch!

I´m a real fan of martial arts and crude humor, so this film was and always will be a guilty pleasure of mine. If your late-night movie stash consists of more than a few old karate flicks, you should be able to appreciate the thought that went into the parody that is Kung Pow. If a cow that shoots milk torpedoes out of its utters and nunchukas made of gophers don’t deter you, then nothing will stop you from liking this movie. I don’t have any deep or analytical things to say, only that this movie is simply a lot of fun. Steve Oedekerk has completely mastered the fine art of foolishness. This, and many of the movie’s sight and sound gags, are cheap in their construction and execution, but still manage to provide one with a well-spent 80 minutes of almost-continuous laughter.