Tongan Ninja

The name of this film alone is enough to make me laugh. Tongan Ninja tells the story of a Tongan ninja who travels to New Zealand to help a Chinese restaurant defend itself against greedy gangsters. It's a Z-grade kung fu parody made by a bunch of Kiwis with some digital video cameras, and the plot is lifted directly from the Bruce Lee film The Way of the Dragon. Tongan Ninja is probably most famous now (if at all) for featuring an early appearance from Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as the bad guy, but it's also one of those films that are so (intentionally) bad and over the top that it's hilarious.



Kung Fu films are very easy to parody (see related texts below) but there's something about setting this film in Auckland, New Zealand, that just cracks me up. It's got no budget, is literally so bad it's good, features a stackload of deliberately lame lines that make fun of the genre, has cartoonish characters and plot, and makes use of some truly shocking CGI. It's very silly, but also very spot on. As it's shot on a camcorder this means that the characters are overdubbed, but this actually fits with the kung fu parodying and so the bad overdubbing works to the film's advantage.





Some things I loved:

• The Chinese characters are almost all played by white guys, without any makeup, prosthetics or accents!
• The 'Tongan mind trick'.
• The songs are very much in the style of Flight of the Conchords, and performed by Jemaine and Bret from said TV show. The best of these is probably the James Bond/Hawaiian Elvis styled theme song at the film's beginning.
• Tongan Ninja's dream sequence, in which two bad guys appear. One of them asks, "Why aren't there any girls in your dream? Are you a homo?" and then it cuts to Jemaine Clement pouting suggestively.
  
  

DIRECTOR: Jason Stutter

WRITER/SOURCE: Jason Stutter and Jemaine Clement.

KEY ACTORS: Sam Manu, Jemaine Clement, Linda Tseng, Raybon Kan, David Fane, Victor Rodger



RELATED TEXTS:

- Kung fu parodies: Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, Kung Phooey, They Call Me Bruce, Orgasmo and Kwoon.

- As mentioned earlier, Tongan Ninja lifts its plot directly from The Way of the Dragon.

- Writer-director Jason Stutter teamed up with Jemaine Clement two further times with Diagnosis: Death and Predicament.

- Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie's unique brand of comedy-songwriting was showcased further with the cult HBO sitcom Flight of the Conchords