Kung Fury
Kung Fury: After being struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra a cop is transformed into a Kung Fu master and swears to protect his city from evil; evil like Adolf Hitler. Not unlike a Zucker brothers comedy, Kung Fury is crammed with a continuous assault of gags – lots hit the mark, some don’t, but the rapid pace doesn’t give you time to dwell on any of them. There are however a couple of big reservations that hit you when watching this: firstly, it all seems overly familiar because the film’s structured like a collage of ‘cool’ scenes, ideas and parodies from lots of great sources – Danger 5 (literally dozens of ideas stolen from this), Iron Sky, Oldboy, MacGruber, Mortal Kombat, ThunderCats, MASK… all of which are welcome, but you’ll have seen elsewhere. Secondly, with the characters being steampunk Nazis, talking animals, Viking babes with machine guns, dinosaurs etc – it feels like box-checking meme-bait: think SuckerPunch distilled into 30 minutes. Aesthetically, it looks beautiful and feels retro – mostly green screen, but all very well done, with seamless editing, and a couple of nostalgic VHS wear / tracking / distortion moments that really play up the 80s setting. There’s no denying that Kung Fury is fun, entertaining, and particularly well-crafted given the CGI-heavy nature – but ultimately it’s let down by a distinct lack of originality content.
Score: 7/10
You can watch the entire movie on YouTube below
Paragraph Film Reviews 
I can understand your critique of it borrowing from other movies, but so does Tarantino in his films. Personally I think it is the most entertaining short film I’ve watched this year.
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Good point, although I feel that Tarantino puts enough of his own spin/stamp on things to make them truly ‘his own’. (You know when you’re watching a QT film).
Danger 5 is on Netflix just now, if you give the first few episodes a spin then re-watch Kung Fury I think there’s too many aspects that have been blatantly nicked. – E.G. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfaI1-ANb6s
Still though, can’t argue that it’s not entertaining.
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Kung Fury packed a lot into its 30 minute running time. I think it did it well – yeah, a few of the jokes missed the spot, but I assumed they were meant to. Perhaps I’m giving it too much credit. All I know is by the end, I wanted more.
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Hate to be ‘that guy’ who shamelessly keeps plugging the same thing but Danger 5 on Netflix is absolutely brilliant, and appeared to be a major influence on the more zaney elements of Kung Fury. 13 episodes and a pilot of solid gold. S1 is set in a Gerry Anderson style 1960s, and S2 is the 1980s. Can’t recommend it enough.
https://paragraphfilmreviews.com/2015/03/02/danger-5/
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