Emily
Ann (Lorraine Masterson) is a young farmgirl who’s perpetually picked on by her
three ornery brothers. She finally has
enough of their shit, slaps a Bruce Lee poster on her bedroom wall, and begins
training to become a Kung Fu ass-kicker (she bench-presses her bed as part of
her training). Emily Ann proceeds to
kick her brothers’ asses before leaving home for good. She then goes on to become Awesome Lotus, the
world’s leading lady Kung Fu secret agent. After her retirement, she is lured back into
action to stop a madman who’s been assassinating supermodels.
The farmhouse scene where Lotus kicks the crap out of her brothers is great. Then we get an equally fun James Bond-inspired opening credits sequence. In fact, the first five minutes of Awesome Lotus: Mistress of the Martial Arts is… well… awesome. Sadly, the next eighty-five minutes are anything but.
Sure,
there is a stray laugh here and there (like the subtitles gag and the flashes
of “gratuitous gore” and “needless nudity”). That’s just due to the law
of averages because the jokes fly so fast and furious. For every fun bit there’s about fifteen or
twenty jokes that land with a thud. An
Airplane-style spoof of Kung Fu movies wasn’t a bad idea, but the low budget
and half-assed fight scenes often make it look like a sub-Troma effort.
A
Fistful of Yen this is not.
The
big problem is the best jokes are weighted towards the beginning. There’s a musical number halfway through that
just stops the movie on a dime. From
there, it completely runs out of gas, and the longer it painfully sputters
along, the worse it gets.
Director
David O’Malley went on to write the much better erotic thriller spoof, Final
Instinct.
AKA: Awesome Lotus. AKA:
Enter the Bassett.
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