Top 3 Funniest Kung-Fu Movies Ever
When we put on a kung-fu movie to watch, we don’t exactly want to be amused. Unless it’s a movie that only barely has anything to do with kung-fu as we know it, like “Shaolin Soccer”, we kind of mostly expect a movie to deliver a very basic plot, flat characters, a clear-cut struggle of good vs evil (both of which can be easily and quickly identified) and some absolutely spectacular fight scenes. Think “Enter the Dragon” or “Kill Bill Vol. 1” – those films are basically the definition of what a kung-fu movie is supposed to be. But, like any other genre, kung-fu cinema has given us a whole lot of variety, and a good chunk of movies are downright hilarious, for one reason or another! In this article I’ll try to showcase three movies, each of which is a different kind of funny. I promise you, though – they’re all hilarious!
1. City Hunter
Let’s get the obvious choice out of the way, shall we? Jackie Chan is THE person we associate with kung-fu comedy, period. He’s the Robin Williams of action comedy, no one else has managed to even come close to what he’s doing, so of course a movie of his was going to be on the list! It was difficult to pick just one – the obvious answer, of course, was “Rush Hour”, but that seemed a bit too easy. “The Tuxedo”, “Supercop”, “Drunken Master” and more are all worthy choices, but honestly, I’m going to have to go with the 1993 flick “City Hunter”, because it’s goofy, ridiculous and I absolutely adore it. You wanna know just how ridiculous it is? Take a look at this scene in which a bunch of “Street Fighter II” characters fight it out after Jackie Chan’s character Ryu gets electrocuted by an arcade machine. It’s that kind of movie, folks, and it’s wonderful.
2. Ten Brothers of Shaolin
On its own, in its original form, “Ten Brothers of Shaolin” is nothing special. Honestly, when I first watched it subtitled, I found it to be rather boring. The fight scenes are very obviously fake, the storyline is dull and predictable, the characters are basically cardboard, there’s just nothing there that makes me want to go back to this movie, ever. It’s not bad, exactly, there’s nothing inherently wrong or offensive about it, it’s just kind of boring, at least in my opinion. And then I watched the dubbed version… And boy oh boy, did my opinion change entirely! You see, back in the 70s and 80s, it was extremely cheap to import kung-fu movies to the West, give them the cheapest, fastest dub you could and then release them, and “Ten Brothers” is by far the worst offender. I mean, listen to this! LISTEN TO IT! It’s hilarious!
2. Kung-Pow: Enter The Fist
I debated with myself a lot whether I was supposed to go with “Kung-Pow” or “Kung-Fury” for this one, but ultimately “Kung-Pow” won out simply by virtue of being funnier. You know how I just mentioned that we got a whoooole lot of terribly dubbed kung-fu movies 40 years ago? Well, “Kung-Pow” is basically the exact same thing, except the dub is deliberately bad, and it’s amazing! This movie is basically the result of a bunch of localizers taking a terrible movie and just basically improvising their way through the dialogue before recording the results. It’s glorious, it’s fantastic, it’s going to split your sides. If you’re not convinced, check it the famous Wimp Lo scene, which is one of my favorite from the film. While the movie, for whatever reason, has something like 11% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I think that it’s mostly because critics expected a straight-up kung-fu movie and got what is essentially a stealth parody. The user score is much higher, so just trust me and go check it out!