Kung Fu Yoga

Image credit: IMDb

Ever find a film that is trying so to be something popular and being so sincere about it that you cannot help but laugh at it? That was me last weekend when I curled up with my partner and we decided to check out Kung Fu Yoga.

It follows the story of an archaeologist (Jackie Chan) who embarks on a dangerous mission to some Tibetan ice caves to find the remains of an ancient group of warriors and unlock the mysteries of a hidden treasure in India.

While there are certain aspects of this movie that have that campy, spoofy, satirical vibe of Kung Fu Hustle or The Mermaid, for the most part Kung Fu Yoga is a Chinese movie that takes all the popular bits from Western ‘classics’ and smooshes them together. There story itself is very Indiana Jones to the point where the references are almost painful, then we have a little Mission Impossible, a little The Hangover, and it’s rounded off with a closing Bollywood scene. It would be funny if there wasn’t this feeling of complete sincerity throughout the movie; like it’s trying to hard to be like the popular kids and just really not pulling it off.

There is definitely more kung fu than yoga, which makes the title itself pretty redundant, and ironically there is still a pretty weighty level of Orientalism or romanticism of the exotic, namely in the form of the female characters who are Indian princesses and thus get to wear beautiful, but sexualised attire.

Image credit: India.com

The progress of the story is wholly predictable to point of making one groan and while the characters themselves are kind of cool, they are pretty clichéd and burdened with gimmicks and one-liners that fall flat due to lack of context.

It’s a bit of a blunder as a kung fu movie and if you watch it, you watch it for its silliness and predictability because, aside from reading the subtitles, there’s not a lot of brain stimulation to be had from it.

Director: Stanley Tong, 2017

Cast, Jackie Chan, Disha Patani, Amyra Dastur, Aarif Rahman, Miya Muqi, Sonu Sood, Paul Philip Clark, Yixing Zhang, Yuxian Shang, Jiang Wen, Eric Tsang, and Guoli Zhang