The good news: the actors, martial artists, and editors did the best with the script that they had. The editing, stunts, and overall plot was a good parody of old Hong Kong kung fu movies and Italian mobster movies.
The bad news: after hearing the white men in the cast and crew speak, I'm certain that they think they're parodying racist stereotypes when they're, in fact, perpetuating them. As one of the few Asian Americans (or the Orientals, as one cast member calls us) in the audience, I had the pleasure of listening to a bunch of white men pat each other on the back about how they didn't cross the line into racist jokes while also going on about a hilarious Asian-men-have-small-members joke. Then the same guys spent 5 minutes talking about how we can't "laugh at these things anymore". The moderator, another lovely white gentleman who has studied martial arts for many years, was quick to remind everyone how he goes to Chinatown every week and that he trained with "brothers" (black men) back in the day. He wasn't sure how the "brothers" got into the dojo since they didn't speak Mandarin and he did. Mind you, none of these details had anything to do with the movie. After listening to back-to-back rants about how much these people appreciated kung fu and how the Triad still runs Chinatown (Jesus Christ.), I decided that it was time to let boomers be boomers and left.
The bad news: after hearing the white men in the cast and crew speak, I'm certain that they think they're parodying racist stereotypes when they're, in fact, perpetuating them. As one of the few Asian Americans (or the Orientals, as one cast member calls us) in the audience, I had the pleasure of listening to a bunch of white men pat each other on the back about how they didn't cross the line into racist jokes while also going on about a hilarious Asian-men-have-small-members joke. Then the same guys spent 5 minutes talking about how we can't "laugh at these things anymore". The moderator, another lovely white gentleman who has studied martial arts for many years, was quick to remind everyone how he goes to Chinatown every week and that he trained with "brothers" (black men) back in the day. He wasn't sure how the "brothers" got into the dojo since they didn't speak Mandarin and he did. Mind you, none of these details had anything to do with the movie. After listening to back-to-back rants about how much these people appreciated kung fu and how the Triad still runs Chinatown (Jesus Christ.), I decided that it was time to let boomers be boomers and left.