After movies like "Yogi Bear" and "The Smurfs" it's no surprise that Hollywood would continue it's trend of taking your childhood cartoons and modernizing them to nightmarish levels.
Next on their list is a short lived cartoon that I'll admit to being a fan of, the Kung Fu antics of Hong Kong Phooey; number one super guy. Honestly, I weird choice; but if they can make a movie about the game "Battleship" I guess they can do anything.
The thing is, like a lot of adaptions of old cartoons, Hollywood has a habit of explaining things in dumb ways that we as kids never cared about, like the existence of little blue gnomes or anthropomorphic animals.
Hong Kong Phooey was about mild mannered janitor, Penry, who moonlighted as a Kung Fu crime fighter. The intro says it all:
Why did the dog talk and know Kung Fu? We didn't care, it was awesome; want to know how Hollywood explains it?
"A mild-mannered dog named Penry stumbles into a mystic ceremony and is accidentally granted mystic powers, including the ability to walk, talk, and do kung fu. Under the tutelage of his kung fu master, Penry dons a costume and becomes Hong Kong Phooey, and with the help of his trusting sidekick Spot the cat cleans up a rogues gallery of wacky criminals.”
That's it, mystic ceremonies. Unlike other films where the weird and absurd can just exist and the inhabitants don't see anything unusual about it they've decided to go the extra mile and explain it away with mysticism. Nice.
I don't have high hopes for this film. I can't account for it's quality until we get a trailer, it's a mistake to judge something before you see it, but I can already feel a nice fissure in my heart growing.
Last but not least is the news that lead me to discover this movie; The announcment that none other then actor Eddie Murphy will be providing the voice acting for Penry. I honestly don't know how to respond to this; My first reaction was sour, but depending on how the film pans out I could go anyway.
Hong Kong Phooey is scheduled for release in 2014.
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