July 2015 - Now Showing - Kung Fury, or, How I learned to love the 80s in less than 30 minutes
Andrew Ragealotski
So, the 80’s. There are a lot of fuckers out there that have this kind of weird fetish with the 80’s that borders on the kind of “Stab you in the back alley because no one else can have you” kind of fetish. They look back fondly at things like polyester, parachute pants, big hair, Reganomics and it leaves them so moist they could irrigate 7 fields of avocados.
Personally I don’t get it at all. There was some great movies and television that came out of that time period, but just about every decade has at least some redeeming factors in that area, but other than that the 80’s really didn’t have anything going for it. So why the hell do I like “80’s Action Revival” film Kung Fury so much?
So I know some of you out there may be saying “What the fuck is ‘Kung Fury?”, others might be saying “Didn’t that come out a couple of years ago?”, and yet others might be saying “how did I get here when I was searching for midget porn?”. Well I can help with the first two questions, you’re on your own for the third, I clear my browser consistently.
The trailer for a proposed “Most 80’s Movie Ever” first surfaced in 2013 along with a Kickstarter campaign to get the movie itself made. The trailer and movie are the brain child of Swedish filmmaker David Sandberg who left his job of directing commercials and music videos to pursue his dream of Kung Fury. After the Kickstarter pulled in $650,000 (a good chunk more than the $200,000 asked, but not enough to expand the movie over a 30-minute run time) Sandberg got to going on production.
Well, when you compare it to other crowd-funded movies it turned out pretty damn well, but the bar was set low (I’m looking at you Iron Sky). If you liked the trailer you are going to like the movie, because the movie pretty much follows the trailer but adds a few more gags in between. The added gags are kind of hit or miss depending on your point of view, but while you may not like some, others will think they are great. For example, I didn’t care for the “Bad VHS Tape” effects that were added to give it an 80’s video tape feel, but I know someone else who thought those were great. My favorite new gag was the “That is not an Aryan mustache” joke but I know someone else who hated it because they thought it ruined the timing of that scene.
One thing is for sure that I don’t think anyone is going to deny, the special effects were lovingly crafted and used well to hide the fact that this was still a very low budget production. It added a new level to the movie for me because it made the movie feel like someone took a modern video game and made it play like a 80’s side scroller. Yes I know the main reason for this was because they only had a couple of uniforms for the bad guys so they had to matte each extra in individually as Sandberg did fighting moves on a green screen, but it was wonderful and creative.
One thing that is missing, though, is a cohesive story of any kind. It pretty much throws as many over the top gags and story points at you as it can in 30 minutes, many of which are mashups of 80’s movie tropes (as expected). The thing is that it doesn’t matter, what matters is that it entertains the shit out of you for 30 minutes and doesn’t apologize for anything while doing so.
So if you haven’t watched it yet, here it is.