A moment of "half-puke" refers to one of those moments of pure, unfiltered horror and terror that everyone gets at the precise instant after they realize that there is no good way out of a situation.
Perhaps you see the flashing cop lights in your rear-view mirror, and you look down to realize your speedometer had been slowly creeping up to 15 over without your knowledge. Maybe you come into your room to find your parents are waiting for you, and next to them is the stack of Gallery, Playboy, and Juggs you had cunningly hidden under your mattress. Maybe the teacher starts handing out an exam you had completely forgotten about, and it's only then that it hits you that you hadn't even read the last 5 chapters of the damn book, and you're not sure that you can "wing it" with Charles Dickens.
Your heart starts beating faster as adrenaline rockets through your veins, your stomach starts its basic seamanship test as it begins to tie various forms of knots, your eyes try to pop out of your skull, and a cold sweat starts seeping out from your skull as your body gets so hot you could become your own pressure cooker. And then some little tiny person in the back of your throat drops an anvil down your esophagus, which lands in your gut with a mighty thud and just SITS THERE.
That's what I'm going through right at this moment, because I know that after this, there is no going back. Nobody is going to listen to what I have to say when it comes to movies ever again. My credibility is henceforth decimated. But, there's nothing for it, so it's time to bite the bullet and just come out and say it -
I love "Kung Pow!: Enter The Fist."
You can't step to gopher-chucks.
This movie...this movie is amazing. It is something that on one hand is hands down the dumbest thing I've ever seen, but at the same time contains sequences that are so breathtakingly brilliant that it really should rival the universally accepted greatest comedies of all time. "It should" is the key phrase in that previous sentence, because it doesn't, but it should.
The concept is rather brilliant: Take an old kung fu movie (in this case a film called "Tiger and Crane Fist") and reedit it with different, funny voiceovers, and digitally swap out the main character with director/writer/star Steve Oedekerk in order to create a whole new narrative, and make it a comedy. It's actually very "Mystery Science Theater 3000" in many ways, almost what you would get if the riffing could actually change the film. And as a die hard "Misty," this kind of thing is right up my ally.
But man is it stupid. I mean dumb. Really dumb. I'm taking "Idiocracy" dumb here. Although to be honest, I think "Idiocracy" isn't as dumb as "Kung Pow!," mostly because with "Idiocracy," you can't really call it dumb humor when that was kind of the whole point. "Idiocracy" was approaching dumb humor from an intelligent, satirical level. "Kung Pow!" is just a strange kind of surrealist dumb. And perhaps that's the best way to go into "Kung Pow!" if you've never seen it: Don't expect anything to make any sense whatsoever.
If "Idiocracy" is a Salvidor Dali painting, "Kung Pow!" is an Andy Warhol.
The parts that are funny in this movie are sidesplitting. I don't know how anyone could watch the "stomach plug" scene, with the narration just going on and on about it, and not get a laugh. And if you remember my entry a while ago about "Casa de mi Padre" where I talked about jokes that go on for really long being really hit or miss depending on how over-the-top it goes, "Kung Pow!" contains a scene which could be a textbook example on how to do that kind of extended joke well.
If you've never thought that 4 men beating the everloving crap out of a guy with sticks could be funny, good lord are you in for a treat. I cried laughing the first time I saw this.
But for me, there is really only one thing that makes "Kung Pow!" stand out, and that's the characters. Every single one of these characters is quite frankly amazing, even if some of them just approach levels of "wrong" that defy explanation (Master Tang, I'm looking at you). The main character, Chosen One, played by Oedekerk, has some fantastic moments including imploring people to reconsider, and making vows while adding to the dictionary.
"Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for
killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong. From this
moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab."
But like most comedies, the main character is not the most memorable one. The supporting cast in this film, or at least, the performances created by Oedekerk, are incredibly fun. I absolutely adore the inconceivably inept Wimp-Lo, a "fighter" who has been trained wrong as a joke by his master. Ling, the Chosen One's love interest, is potentially one of the strangest character in modern movie history, and is probably the second most quotable character in the film, despite the fact that the quoting of any of her lines usually ends up breaking down into someone screaming "WEEOO WEEOO WEEOO."
But the absolute best character is Master Pain, who you shall all refer to as "Betty." Betty is hands down the best part of the film, as he has the best lines, and really hammers home more than anyone else the completely absurd nature of the movie. Again, it's not that I can really explain it, and I don't know why him saying crap like "Mmm...sleepy time" and "A tiny net is a death sentence. It's a net and it's tiny!" is so ungodly funny, but it probably has to do with the voice Oedekerk gives him.This voice falls somewhere between Snidely Whiplash and Burgess Meredith's version of The Penguin as performed by Steve Urkel. And that laugh...mother of god...that laugh...it's amazing.
Betty's stand-up routine could use a bit of work, however.
There are also some admittedly very clever jokes spread throughout that lampoon various cliches of the kung-fu genre or action movies in general. In particular is a very funny sequence near the end that addresses the fact that "Just because I did this *glagh...uggh...::lays head down::* doesn't mean a person is dead," which is technically true. The final payoff to that scene is fantastic by the way.
Now, here's the part where I have to be brutally honest and come down a bit hard on a movie I really like. I said earlier that it should be counted among the funniest movies ever. Well, the reason that key word "should" is in there is that when "Kung Pow!" is funny, it's tear inducing, but when it's not, it's really, really bad. And I'm talking unfunny kind of bad.
The reason it isn't funny all the time is because "Kung Pow!" is a movie whose worst quality is that it tries too hard. The worst parts of this include any time they try and cram a pop culture reference into the movie, which is almost always comedic death. Those parts almost always come off as nearly unwatchable. There are two primary examples of this, both of which use CGI so poorly that you wonder if that was part of the joke. Granted, it would be a part that failed, but still.
The first part is the CGI baby fight. Yes, you read that correctly. Remember the Dancing Baby commercials? Yeah, they made a fight scene using roughly that same level of technology. And yes, it is every bit as stupid as that sounds. The worst part about that is the fact that it's essentially the first thing in the movie, or at least the first gag. It's such a shame that a movie that is so good starts off so poorly, although it has a really funny joke at the very end of that sequence.
But the absolute nadir of the film is, unfortunately, plastered all over the box art, and was a big part of the marketing campaign. It's that stupid cow fight. By Moradin's Hammer, is that terrible. And I'm not sure what made them put it in there. Was it because they could? Was it because there was a "Fighting Cow" program installed in the software they got to do the special effects? Or was it just so they could reference "The Matrix" and do some bad "bullet time?" You know, because THAT hadn't gotten old in the 3 years since that movie had come out.
As weird as it is to say, this movie is better than this...
That just boggles my mind. And the crazy thing is that I remember seeing the trailers for this movie. All you saw was the damn cow. I don't know who they got to do the marketing for this movie, but they needed to be fired. That should be fairly evident considering that I freaking love "Kung Pow!," but when I saw the trailers, if you were to have asked me if I was interested, I'd have put my own eyes out with garden shears before going to see it. And they wonder why it bombed.
Then again, I have no idea how you market a movie like "Kung Pow!"
"WEEEEOO WEEEEOO WEEEEOO" on repeat for 2 and a half minutes, THAT'S how! #brilliant
There are two main things to keep in mind about "Kung Pow!" if you've never seen it before, and perhaps this will help your viewing experience:
1) Understand how dumb it is beforehand, because seriously, you kind of need to brace yourself for it.
2) Watch it with friends. Preferably friends who have seen it already, and are fans. It really does help the experience. Plus, this is one of those films I can't see watching alone. "Kung Pow!" has become something of me and some of my best friends' signature movie, and there's just something special about watching it with good people and laughing your butts off at the dumbest things you've ever seen.
"What do you get when you cross an owl with a bungee chord? MY ASS! Nnnyaaaaa ha ha ha!!! ENOUGH!!!"
THE BOTTOM LINE - "Kung Pow!: Enter The Fist" is the definition of acquired taste. I'm not sure how much someone will like it on the first go, but it's a film that gets funnier the more you watch it, much like "Idiocracy" or "The Big Lebowski." And above all, you need to be ready for some really absurdest humor. Personally, it's one of my favorite comedies. Highly Recommended.
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