Rating: C+
Dir: Steve Oedekerk
Star: Steve Oedekerk, Jimmy Wang Yu, Jennifer Tung
Stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID movie! And yet…perhaps the first guilty pleasure of 2002? The problem here, however, is that those most able to appreciate this parody of bad kung-fu movies, will likely scream “Sacrilege!” at the way Oedekerk has taken a 70’s martial-arts flick (Savage Killers, a.k.a. Tiger and Crane Fists) and reworked it with silly voices. It’s also true to say that, while the way Oedekerk has inserted himself (badly dubbed) into another film is technically astonishing, the best parts are when he shows genuine invention on his own.
Despite a Matrix joke that is now at least two years past its sell-by date, the cow-fu sequence is “udderly” daft (sorry!) and shows what might have been. More of this, and less of Oedekerk’s limited voice-acting – he does all the dubbing himself – would certainly have been helpful. Throw in a merciless Lion King spoof, French-speaking aliens in pyramids, rodent-nunchakus and squirrel-armour, Tonguey (the hero’s animated tongue) and you’ve got something that is deeply juvenile and largely without any real merit. But, hey: I laughed – and, given Oedekerk’s pedigree as the writer of such ‘classics’ as Ace Ventura 2, probably more frequently than I’m willing to admit.