January 25, 2002 -- "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" is a silly spoof of the lowly martial arts movie genre. Since martial arts movies are generally pretty silly in their own right, spoofing them requires an extra large dose of nonsense and this movie has plenty. At times, however, it seemed like just another bad martial arts movie.

The film, written and directed by Steve Oedekerk (who also wrote "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius," "The Nutty Professor" and "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls") uses footage from a 1977 martial arts film called "Savage Killers" (AKA "Tiger & Crane Fist") starring Hong Kong action star Yu Wang. The film was then re-dubbed to match the redone plot and Oedekerk was digitally inserted into the 1977 footage. New scenes were also filmed to complete the project. Woody Allen once used a similar cinematic recycling method to make the re-dubbed "What's Up Tiger Lilly?" Another similarly-made film is Carl Reiner's "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid."

The martial arts genre is ripe for such a spoof, but unfortunately, this film only has about 20 minutes of material thinned out to make an 82 minute film. I kept looking at my watch, wondering if it was ever going to end. The movie does have some funny scenes, like a kung-fu battle between a man and a cow, but there are also lots of groaners. Like the proctology joke about the "Fist of Fury" (title of several martial arts films). The humor is clumsy and obvious and some scenes are stretched out so far that they are just run completely into the ground. The lack of humor is not due to a lack of imagination: There is a single-breasted woman named Whoa (played by Jennifer Tung), a talking, winking tongue and a bunch of flying French pyramids.

In addition to parodies of the martial arts genre, the film also takes pot shots at "The Lion King," "Titanic," "The Matrix," and other films. The movie also makes fun of product placements and sequels. Oedekerk's martial arts mannerisms are often parodies of martial arts legend Bruce Lee's signature moves. The film also makes fun of the terrible dubbing found in many martial arts movies by using even worse dubbing and voices that are purposely ill-matched to the characters. The movie even parodies typical martial arts genre camera shots and features the kind of outakes used during the credits of many Jackie Chan films. Some viewers won't get some of the references used in the film unless they've seen a lot of Hong Kong style martial arts movies.

Kung Pow (a pun referring to some spicy Chinese dishes) has some good ideas and some funny moments, but there isn't enough material here for a feature length film. It would have made a funny 15 to 20 minute sketch in a format like the very funny short martial arts sketch in "Kentucky Fried Movie," or as part of a TV show like "Mad TV." This is a project that needed more work, more ideas and more subtlety. It rates a D+.