Review of Kung Pow: Enter The Fist

Introduction

This sounds like an interesting idea. Take an old film, Shao Lin hu ho chen tien hsia, also called The Savage Killers or Tiger and Crane Fist, and mess about with it. Add some new scenes, replace the lead actor with yourself, and completely re-dub all of the voices for all of the remaining characters.

Obviously you`d need to be a bit full of yourself to take this on, so step forward Steve Oedekerk, the man behind the "Thumb" films (Thumb Wars: The Phantom Cuticle, Bat Thumb, The Godthumb and The Blair Thumb). He also worked on the stories for Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Patch Adams, The Nutty Professor and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.

Add all this up and you get a parody of a martial arts film, which also parodies other films such as The Matrix. Something like Airplane with more fighting and eastern mysticism.

Video

A 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer which looks very good overall. The main thing to point out is that there was a good job done to clean up the footage from the original film, as well as a good job done to make the new footage match up to the older footage. And of course erasing the original lead character from the original footage and replacing him with one shot in 2001.

There`s a mixture of techniques going on here, from DV footage shot in a back yard to CGI, and there`s plenty of blue-screening involved. Some scenes involve a whole body being replaced in a shot, whilst others involve just the head being replaced, as well as things in the background (a branch of Hooters appears in one scene). It`s all done pretty well, and in most places the "join" isn`t too obvious. Things look a bit odd now and again, but it just adds to the fun.

The scene featuring the parody of The Matrix, which I`ve dubbed "milk time" is very funny too.

Audio

An amusing DD5.1 soundtrack is the primary track for the film, and whilst it won`t tax your system unduly, it does its job well, providing some good comedy effects, and some good ambient sounds too. The main soundtrack is a dub, with all voices provided by Oedekerk and co. The dubbing is designed to be utterly out of synch with the visuals, and even the new material is dubbed with completely different words to those that were said when the footage was shot. This is all part of the overall comedy effect.

There are 2 other soundtracks available too (plus a commentary which I`ll come to in the next section). The first one is "What Were They Really Saying?" - this contains the original dialogue from the original film (in chinese), along with the actual words that all of the actors were saying when the new footage was shot. This is quite fun, and the only shame is that there`s no translation for the chinese dialogue.

The final soundtrack option is "The Long Lost Book on Tape Version", which involves a narrator narrating his way through the entire film in a posh English accent. This is really for novelty value only, a bit like the Thermian language audio track on Galaxy Quest.

All of the soundtracks are sub-titled (as is the commentary), so you can listen to one whilst reading another.

Features

A nice little set of extras.

We kick off with an audio commentary from Steve Oedekerk and Paul Marshall (producer and editor), this moves from technical to anecdote and back again, and is certainly worth a listen if you enjoyed the film. They point out bits and pieces that you might have missed, as well as referencing other things on the DVD.

Next up are a couple of featurettes, one called "Behind the Scenes", and another which concentrates on three of the special effects. These are a mixture of cheesey extended trailer, and informative material. You find out about some of the challenges of mixing the original and the new footage, as well as the chance to see a visualisation of the cow scene.

There are also deleted and alternative dialogue scenes, 20 in total, almost all of which were correctly cut from the film.

And to wrap up we have the usual mix of TV spots, notes, trailers, galleries and biographies.

Conclusion

It sounded like an interesting idea, and it turned out to be a funny film. Not the greatest comedy of all time, but an amusing parody backed up by technical excellence. The lip-synch isn`t so annoying, because it`s intentional, and the quality of the picture is great, because the old footage looks good, and the new footage has aged enough to look like the old footage.

The story is utter nonsense, but it serves well enough to link up a series of funny scenes. There are quite a few obivous gags, and a few cheap shots, but it will keep you amused for 80 minutes. Fans of things like Airplane and the Naked Gun trilogy should enjoy this, as will those martial arts fans who treat it as a big joke as opposed to anything remotely related to martial arts films.

Worth a rental at least.