STREET FIGHTER: LEGEND OF CHUN-LI (2009)

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"Maybe you'll laugh, maybe you'll cry. Maybe you'll have a good time, or maybe you'll demand your money back. It all depends on how you respond to really, really, REALLY bad movies in general."

Guess what? I like bad movies. More than most people. I thought The Happening was atrocious, yet I loved it. M. Night Shyamalan made, possibly, the funniest film of 2008. Don't believe me? Then you haven't really watched his ode to sci-fi cheesiness or the Z grade Drive-In fodder that came before it. Some say he did this on purpose. Some say it was a fluke of epic proportions. Either way, I truly believe that it takes an enormous amount of talent to pull a Grade A piece of crap out of your ass. Making something that isn't any good; yet effortlessly watchable requires the same proficient skills it takes to make something cherished like Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight. Crafting trash is an art form. Though I have to Boo! Andrzej Bartkowiak's latest magnum opus Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, I also have to stand a few feet away from it in sheer awe. It is amazingly awful. Hands down the worst film of the year. Yet, it is made up of such terrible brilliance, I still have to admire it on many different levels.

What am I to make of an action film where Michael Clark Duncan (all eight feet of him) runs away from a piece of fruit? Where Chris Klein does a purposely bad Keanu Reeves impersonation before engaging in a doe-eyed staring contest with the camera every time it goes to leave him behind like an abandoned child? Where the super villian makes a big production out of fetching his daughter and brings her home on an export barge instead of having her arrive inconspicuously on an airplane? Where the best line in the whole film is, "You are the milk of this operation...But even milk has an expiration date!" I mean, what the heck is that? Even milk has an expiration date? Of course milk has an expiration date. It's the one date we always check without fail. Justin Marks should be thrown in movie jail for writing such nonsense. Luckily for those of us stuck watching this mess, Bartkowiak has upped the absurdity level, making each harsh line and bad performance levitate above its own intended shore of shiftiness.

Video game adaptations are stuck in a rut. They are in the same place comic book movies were in the 80s: Seemingly unfilmable, and thus, unwatchable on just about every level. Has there been a good one? Not yet. Not really. I'd have to say this is the worst of its kind. Bartkowiak's last attempt at filmmaking resulted in Dwayne Johnson's only thematic atrocity, the first-person shooter adaptation Doom. On all accounts, it was Dog Dick Afternoon. Here, he doesn't fare much better. The Legend of Chun-Li is meant to be a franchise rejuvenator and reinvention. The next installment would have been The Legend of Ryu (who is only mentioned at the end of this installment). Hopefully, Fox will come to understand that this is a Direct-to-DVD series, and if the second one is created with as much off-energy, it will probably flourish on the home market. I don't see it fairing as well on theater screens. Too many variables get in the way. Like lack of a good story, any exciting fight scenes, and at least one interesting character. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li only has one thing going for it. A sad fact; the movie is more enjoyable than 1994's big screen incarnation starring Jean Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia (sadly, his last featured film role). I didn't think it would be. But in anticipation for this release, Universal has dropped a Special Edition of that Steven E. de Souza action extravaganza into stores. I checked it out, thinking it would be a goofy bit of fun. Nope, its just as incoherent and lame as you remember. And stands as an important document in the fall of Van Damme as a bankable star.

With The Legend of Chun Li, director Bartkowiak and screenwriter Marks have set out to create a whole new timeline and backstory for our beloved Street Fighter characters. This is a problem, because they never had much of a story to begin with. Am I mistaken, or was the point of Street Fighter to beat your opponent into a bloody pulp? I don't remember much of a plot aside from that. The Nintendo 64 version of this classic arcade game contains more graphic gore than an unrated slasher flick. It's all but absent here. In the 1994 version, Raul Julia played General M. Bison as a whacked out dictator in gaudy purple vinyl boating attire. In this reconfigured version, Neal McDonough's Bison is a real estate magnate attempting to buy up the slums of Hong Kong. He is also the mastermind behind the underground criminal organization Shadaloo, which is made up entirely of villainous characters from the game including Vega, a metal mask wearing musician with one lone Wolverine claw, and Balrog, a giant of a man that hightails it at the first site of fruit being thrown. This Bison seems to be human, dressed in designer three-piece suits, yet he has somehow transferred his evil soul into the body of his unborn daughter. Except, he's still walking around. Alive and well. Huh? What? Don't ask me. It doesn't make any sense.

Chun-Li gets swept up in Bison's diabolical plan when she is five years old. While practicing kung fu moves with Dad in the backyard, Shadaloo kidnap her father and build him a luxurious prison in the basement of the Bison estate. There, he toils away for fifteen years, coming up with the perfect plan to buy up all the seashore slums in Hong Kong. During that time, Chun-Li learns classical piano. Destiny moves her in the direction of her long lost pop, and before you know it, she is dispensing crackerjack kicks to kids in alleyways. Why the cast of Cats is homeless, roaming the poor part of China is lost on me. But they sure do hate young, beautiful half-Chinese women. Checking my watch for an easy calculation, this first major fight scene, which has absolutely no impact on the story, comes in at the thirty minute mark. That's a long time to wait for what we came for. And it's executing with all the excitement of a dental visit.

While traipsing around the dirtiest street in Hong Kong, Chun-Li soon finds herself becoming indebted to video game character Gen, who teachers her how to turn a few good ivory licks into a tried and true fighting technique. Together, they learn of a shipment that Bison is bringing into the nearby docks. Most of the story is hinged on this quaint idea. What could be on that giant freighter? A lot of troubled exposition revolves around figuring out its docking port and time of arrival. When you realize what he's actually bringing into Asia, its worthy of another huge sigh and eye roll. Yes, he is having his daughter shipped in a large box on a giant boat, and it is causing problems for everyone. Why the hell didn't he just get her a plane ticket? Wouldn't that have been the inconspicuous way to go? Maybe have a taxi pick her up and bring her back to the mansion? No. He has to make a big dog and pony show out of the visit. Again, this just doesn't make any sense. The fact that this plot hub is tagged with the worst dialogue in the history of video game adaptations makes it even more of a challenge to sit through.

There is an unnecessary subplot that features Interpol agent Charlie Nash and his Hong Kong counterpart Detective Maya Sunee (an incredibly bored looking Moon Bloodgood) investigating the nefarious shadow organization Shadaloo. A dozen business men are discovered headless in a trash can. It does little to service the story, but it does give Chris Klein a good reason to look surely. As Nash, a character never before introduced in the video games, he crimps and preens like a deserted runway model. His greasy hair is artfully tousled. And he ends every single shot with a cow-eyed look deep into the camera, jostling his neck just so. Cocking his eye. Is the guy for real? This is either the single worst performance from a male actor we have ever seen, or the most brilliant. I can't decide which, but it's enough to turn Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li into a must-see basement dwelling Z grade classic of biblical proportions. If there is a shoddier theatrical release headed our way this year, I don't want to know about it. I know the Razzies were held just last week, but we have an early contender here. Klein should win in 2010, hands down. He is so atrocious and inept at bringing any life into this limp stick figure, he pulls attention away from everything else in the room. With this particular adaptation of the Street Fighter video game, that was a challenging maneuver to pull off. As it is crooked and stupid, and not really worth our invested time on the whole.

God, what a dreadful little film. Yet, it has this magnetic field of shitty brilliance surrounding and shellacking it. Like a dead starfish on a piece of balsawood. The Legend of Chun-Li gets a bloated Boo! all the way. But hey, for you bad movie aficionados who are in on the joke, and know not to take it seriously, it gets a middling Whoop-doo!

(All of B. Alan Orange's reviews are based on the Boo! or Whoop-doo! evaluation system.)