Kung Phooey! (2003)

This movie will have you laughing. It will have you saying "I know what they mean. " It is a great parody of all kung fu flicks, young and old. It offers good pop culture jokes, and lots of Asian stereotype jokes (although these are acted out, and many TRY to be stereotypes. The cast is mainly Asian, so this is of course viewed as acceptable, as they are making fun of their own kind. ) The jokes range from cheap humor to actual in depth jokes. It's not crazy like Kung Pow. It has a main plot (a fairly good one at that) , and focuses on the character's personalities. The script is good, the actors are good too. The film is presented nicely, and this film has made Darell Fong one of my favorite directors.

This film goes consistently along with Scarie Movie 2 and 3, Better Off Dead, One Crazy Summer, Weird Science, Ferris Bullers Day Off, Kung Pow, Harold and Kumar, Half Baked, Big Trouble in Little China and I can go on and on. The movie presents comedy on a lot of different levels and is highly entertaining in my opinion if you like cheesy indie comedies. The film incorporates satire of traditional Chinese film and cultural stigmas in kung fu style showing the great sense of humor these comedians and writers have.Thie movie is great for kids and family too, it had me laughing and repeating lines from the movie for weeks.

I've known about Kung Phooey for a while now. I've been seeing it for about a year on my local Hollywood Video shelf. I mean, come on. It's kind of hard to miss the cover of the DVD box. I've been meaning to watch it for a while, it looking like a cheaper version of a favorite film of mine: Kung Pow. Finally I picked it up the other day for a chuckle. Did I get what I wanted? Well, yes and no.Kung Phooey is not really a bad movie for what it is. It's a low budget spoof of the Kung Fu genre. And, at times, it works as such. But the sad truth is that it falls into the pitfall of 90% of low budget comedies. It just doesn't know how to tell a joke. The joke is set up and given, but the punchline just kind of falls flat and without much fanfare. I don't know what is with low budget comedies like this. Perhaps it's too long of a pause after a punchline. Perhaps it's silly music to accentuate the punchline. If I had more time and effort, I'm sure I could do a very revealing study on it. However, I'm a very lazy man.So in summation, Kung Phooey is not necessarily a bad film. The script is good enough, the acting is good enough, the filming is good enough. For a low budget film, at least you can see the director knows what he's doing. But it just kind of sits like cardboard in that it's not funny. Truly, I would give this film a 4.5 if I could. But seeing that I can tell they had good intentions and they tried their best, I'll give them the benefit of the curve.

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All CostsAdmittently I'm a little biased here,as I have something of a penchant for spoof movies and we have recently already had the similarly themed Kung Pow:Enter the Fist.And the kung fu genre has already kind of been parodied to death as it is.But all the same,this manages to be hilariously funny in it's own right.***