‘Tis with a fiery passion that I detest comedy writer Steve Oedekerk’s many thumb-based parody shorts, which include Thumbtanic, Bat Thumb and Thumb Wars: The Phantom Cuticle. They’re simply fucking stupid. I dislike them so much that I half-wish he would lose those two digits in an accident, in a bizarre twist of irony.
So I fully expected to despise his chopsocky parody, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, with a passion. But other than an instantly dated Matrix bit, a lame gopher gag and the inane talking-tongue business (thus replacing the thumb), I really, really, really enjoyed it.
And to this day, I’m pretty embarrassed to admit it.
For the movie, Oedekerk removed the soundtrack from Hong Kong’s 1976 Jimmy Wang Yu vehicle Tiger and Crane Fist, and dubbed most all the voices himself. Using blue-screen technology, he also stars in the movie as the Chosen One, a martial-arts master seeking revenge for the murder of his parents at the hands of evil guy Master Pain, who now calls himself Betty.
All the conventions of the kung fu film are sent up with a mix of mindless Airplane!-style humor and good-natured Farrelly brothers raunch. But it most resembles a solid episode of TV’s Mystery Science Theater 3000, minus the silhouettes. Repeat value is strong with this one. —Rod Lott