"Betty has gone too far. Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like... badwrong. Or... badong. Yes. Killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: Gnodab."
An evil man kills an entire family to get at a baby that is destined to become the Chosen One. The baby escapes, grows up in the wild, fights off attackers by ripping their clothes into shred-bikinis, joins a school of martial artists who loudly admit that they wear push-up bras, eventually meets the evil man — who, in the intervening years, has changed his name to Betty — and later fights a cow. He is also the Chosen One because his tongue has a face on it; its name is Tonguey.Oh, and there are French aliens.No, really.A refreshing comedy that's stupid — but amusingly so — Kung Pow! Enter The Fist is a 2002 film written and directed by lead actor Steve Oedekerk. The film uses footage from an obscure kung-fu movie called Tiger and Crane Fist, along with newly-shot and bluescreened footage (mainly to insert Oedekerk into the film), to create a rather anarchic parody of kung-fu movies in general. Virtually every line is insane — and very quotable; it was difficult choosing which one to put up at the top — and everyone's voice (save Whoa) is dubbed over by Oedekerk himself.A sequel, Kung Pow 2: Tongue of Fury, was due to follow; it's been in Development Hell for years, though. Word Of God states that Oedekerk is (still) trying to find the right Hong Kong movie(s) to lift scenes from.
Aluminum Christmas Trees: Some martial arts schools actually "trained" students they considered unworthy like Wimp Lo was "trained", and certain forms of Chinese martial arts do go to considerable lengths to toughen up the practitioner's skin (although not usually to the point of breaking a thermometer in their student's hands).
Ambiguously Gay: Betty. A feared, skilled, powerful male kung-fu master and warlord decides to go under the alias "Betty".
Balls of Steel: This is one of Master Pain's / Betty's powers. The scene where Betty demonstrates said powers (where a guy strikes Betty/Pain directly in the crotch with a pole and he doesn't even flinch) was apparently the reason why Steve Oedekerk chose that particular film to use.
Wimp Lo apparently thinks he has this, considering his secondary style is Nuts-to-Your-Fist.
And the Chosen One learns the hard way that, no, he does not have this power. At all. He might not even have balls after the test run.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: An intermission occurs midway through, where the characters tell the audience to go buy snacks. Whoa is, suprisingly, about the only character in the movie itself aware of the fourth wall, breaking it repeatedly.
Brick Break: During his training montage, the Chosen One goes to punch a board, stops inches from it, then extends his index finger. The board explodes, sending the two men behind it flying.
Master Tang: Eeny meeny miney moe, I wonder where my glove will go...
Groin Attack: One of Master Pain's Betty's special abilities allows him to resist shots to the groin. The Chosen One tries to see if he possesses this ability only to play the trope straight...
Steve Oedekerk: "Oooooh! OK, I'm gonna need a cup."
According to the DVD commentary, this scene from Tiger and Crane Fist is what led to it being picked.
Taken up to eleven in a deleted scene from the final fight, where the Chosen One unleashes a barrage of kicks, punches, and headbutts upon Betty's naughty bits, to absolutely no effect.
One of the deleted scenes features an attack with a groin as the Chosen One escapes from a torturer by beating him and his guards up with his... well... y'know.
"At that moment, the Chosen One learned a valuable lesson about iron claws...THEY HURT LIKE CRAP, MAN!"
Master Tang gets in on it with a line of audible thought:
"OK, so here were my options - A.) Quickly duck sideways, dodge the claw, then take him out with a spinning back kick, or B.) Take the claw in the face, then roll on the ground and die. (proceeds to take claw to the face) Hmm, should've gone with A."
Lip Lock: Almost always ignored for humour, except when it is occasionally followed... for humour. Example:
Betty: People say that I do things that are not...(pause) correct-to-do.
Attention is drawn to this quite often. Example: Oedekerk's character looks to be shouting something with a lot of emotion and the camera zooms in on his face, but you hear him say, in a less-than-excited voice, "I implore you to reconsider."
The words Oedekerk is really yelling: "I'M SOMEBODY'S MOMMY!!"
Parodied with Ling, whose line always end before her lips stop moving, so she ends most lines with "wee-ohh, wee-ohh" noises.
Also with the ventriloquists, who never open their mouths.
Lull Destruction: Parodied, when a relatively wordless fight scene between the main villain and two random guys in the original movie is turned into a more talkative fight between Betty and a pair of ventriloquists.
Master of the Mixed Message: Ling is very indecisive about how much she loves the Chosen One. Even though she repeatedly flashes her breasts to him, she doesn't want him to think she's a slut.
Moses in the Bullrushes: Subverted. The first woman who finds the Chosen One as a baby lying on the side of the mountain he's rolled half-way down stops, picks him up, and coos "So cute..." before bidding him farewell as she lobs him to roll down the other half of the mountain. (Where he is eventually found, and raised... by "various rodents".)
Mayor: Master, what exactly is the Evil Council's plan?
Betty: It is evil. Mnah hah, It is so evil! It is a bad, bad plan that will hurt many... people...that are good. I think it's great, because it's so bad.
Mayor: I see. I think.
Overly Long Gag: A scene near the beginning is around two minutes of Whip-Zooms accompanied by dramatic musical stings.
And also when Ling calls out to him later in the film.
Plot Hole: During the final battle, there's no explanation as to how Master Betty loses his iron claws or what The Chosen One is holding at the start of the battle. (In the original film, Jimmy Wang Yu's character uses fireworks fuse to burn the cable that connects the claws. That part got left out of this film entirely.)
Portmanteau: "Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for killing. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, killing is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: gnodab."
"Ba na na na na, Neo! Ba na na na na na na, Sporin!"
If you look closely when during the scene in which Betty goes to fight Master Tang, during the zoom out you can see people moving tables and on the left side you can clearly see a Hooters.
When The Chosen One goes to buy nuts, there is a shelf of Pringles behind him.
Ruleof Cool: The Chosen One is able to do fifteen backflips in mid-air before landing and is able to do push-ups without touching the ground (he holds himself airborne by blowing the ground).
Rule of Three: To the point of reusing the same footage of Chosen One saying "Hmm?" three times.
Sequel Snark: It spends a good deal of time at the end of the movie showing a full trailer for the sequel, made up mostly of scenes deleted from the first movie. Naturally, no such movie exists (though an unrelated sequel is currently in Development Hell).
Mushufasa is also a portmanteau of Mufasa and one of Mulan characters - dragon Mushu
Sissy Villain: Played straight and inverted. Wimp Lo has a very high voice and is indeed wimpy, but Betty is pretty manly despite the high, nasally voicename, and the Chosen One has his own points of sissyness.
Early on, he is assaulted by a large masculine man who says "Your days are over, Mister" in a high-pitched lisp. The Chosen one shreds his clothes into a bikini, which causes him to wrap his arms around himself as if to protect his modesty and run off crying.
Smoke Out: Averted when the smoke is too small and conditions are too windy to hide the ninja.
Wimp Lo, you must be careful. Your confidence is disproportional to your abilities. You think losing is winning.
The Stinger: No one actually recovered Master Tang after his "death" scene, and the crew just laugh as a hawk arrives to eat him. Also, save the whales.
Talking to Himself: Every character except Whoa is voiced by Steve Oedekerk. Also see Throw it in.
Theme Music Power-Up: Betty has a guy with a boom box playing "Can't Touch This" and "Baby Got Back". Also when the Chosen One changes the music to "Black Betty"
"Beware... his song... about big butts. He... beats you up while he plays it!"
Throw It In: Oedekerk was originally going to have an entire cast of actors providing voices, instead of just him. Then he did a couple test scenes as Evil Betty and Master Tang and it was so fun and funny that he kept going.
Steve Oedekerk (on the DVD Commentary): Well, the whole movie is me talking to myself.
Translation: Yes: "______________________________________________________ I dunno."
Trivially Obvious: "Behold the two symbols. One of them...over here. The other one...over here."
Verbal Tic: Developed to fill time when the characters are still talking on the film but have run out of dialogue. Eventually leads to this exchange:
Voodoo Shark: Played for laughs with the "I am a great magician" sequence. Steve Oedekerk wanted to edit two shorter dialogue scenes into one long scene, but found a major problem in that the mayor was wearing a black robe in one scene and a red in the other. So he stuck in some dialogue regarding Betty's great magical powers, and had him change the mayor's clothing when needed.
Walking the Earth: "So on he walked... and sometimes, drove... and occasionally, partied with the desert creatures."
The War Sequence: The Chosen One faces down the army of the Evil Council... in the sequel.
A smaller one (that we actually see) occurs near the beginning.
Wimp Fight: Wimp Lo. Justified, as the dojo deliberately trained him wrong "as a joke".
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