Ekin Cheng plays Ken, an executive with the bright idea of organizing a martial arts tournament to promote a drink called “Mighty Force.” He travels to a Shaolin temple to ask a fighter, Shek, to appear, but Shek sends his daughter, Anna –a girl with dreams of becoming a Hollywood star— in his place. A barrage of kisses are enough to suddenly make her fall head over heels for Ken and she follows him back to the tournament where we learn Ken has a girlfriend waiting for him. Between the tricky love triangle and “fierce” tournament, Anna has a lot of work to do.
In one particular scene from Anna in Kungfu-land, an artistic, film festival award winning director is on set to film a commercial for a product. He enthusiastically speaks about his ambitious vision of filming the spot with one shot like Yasujiro Ozu, until his producer scoffs and tells him he needs more special effects. It may be a veiled, subversive cry for help from director Raymond Yip or a completely unintentionally self-referential moment. But either way, this film—complete with horrid fight choreography, cheesy special effects and poor storytelling—is an all too true result of awful filmmaking ideas.
Somehow, the genres get mixed up and all the action scenes become laughable, while the comedy is incredibly painful. The fighters all appear woefully inadequate, moving like snails while the cinematography and editing work together to make this look as fake as possible. The film’s best moment of action occurs in a cafeteria when a forty second long food fight features some convincing plate dodging.
As a result, the love triangle and its related wacky hijinx seem to be the film’s main focus. Still, the comedy and romance is rather forgettable with the typical identity mix-ups and pretend relationship subplots that succeed only in bringing that knife closer to your chest. Only Miriam Yeung and Wong You-nam’s charms manage to shine, but that hardly makes the film any more tolerable. Between the poor direction and illogical, uninteresting plot, Anna in Kungfu-land does not particularly deserve to exist. Frankly, the fact that it does is perhaps the most interesting thing about it.
Reviewed by Tarun
