I’m about to throw myself into some medieval and tudor drama, but before I do I thought I should take this opportunity to talk about Streetfighter: Legend of Chun Li. In fact, I think this movie is worthy of a top ten list; we haven’t had one of those in awhile!

Top Ten Most Awesome(ly BAD) Moments of Streetfighter: Legend of Chun Li

10. The Gratuitous Use of Voice Over
I try to be understanding of an action movie’s use of voice over to move the plot along. After all, we’re watching this to watch people bleed, not to have our soul moved. To that end a little voice over that says the following is acceptable: “I was once a happy child, and then my family suffered horrible tragedy. I proceeded to learn the art of Kung fu and now beat the crap out of sinister looking men” Done and done. With this movie, however, we have more voice over than dialogue or fighting and it all seems to revolve around the line “I stand up when standing up isn’t easy.” Yeah--it gave me indigestion too.

9. The sudden connection and understanding of Chun Li and the international police force
Don’t know about you, but generally when a cop watches me kill someone, even if that someone is a bad guy, and then I run away from him he usually isn’t willing to “back me up” when I set out on a rampant course of vigilantism. Of course I don’t look like Kristin Kreuk. Maybe that’s the key...

8. Moon Bloodgood’s apparent worthlessness to the plot outside of being hot
Moon Bloodgood is a GORGEOUS woman. We’re talking stupid beautiful here. But aside from her walking out of her bedroom in jeans and a bra fresh out of the shower I don’t exactly know what her purpose was for this movie. And the bra was wet--who does that? Have you ever tried to put on a wet bra? It is ridiculously difficult to do. I spent a solid five minutes of the movie perplexed by this wet-bra conundrum instead of watching people get beat up. Lame.

7. The lack of awesomely choreographed ass-kicking
There was a distinct dearth of fighting in this movie. It’s called StreetFIGHTER. Seems like people should fight little bit. That’s all I’m saying.

6. The lack of sexy time
Chun Li never gets any. Since I was eight or however old I was when this video game came out I have waited patiently for some gorgeous male character (like Ryu for example) to wise up to the hotness and coolness of Chun Li. I thought surely in 2009 there would finally be some sexy time for Chun Li! I was wrong. Who wants to learn Kung Fu if you don’t even get to make out with Ryu? Stupid movie.

5. Gen’s Douche-stache
Robin Shou, oh what are you doing to me? He was in Mortal Kombat and a fairly good looking guy I have to say. But in this movie he has this graying, oddly Velcro looking mustache that is neither grown in, nor scruff. It’s like they were aiming for Mr. Miagi and landed at Mr. Miapornstar. Every time he was on screen I found myself screaming out loud from the horror.

4. Chris Klein’s Hair
Rule of Life #578: If, as a man, you find your hair thinning cut it short. Please. It doesn’t look good long. It being long doesn’t hide that it’s thinning. In fact, the excessive length accentuates the thinning hair and/or pronounced widows peak. Who was the stylist that looked at Chris Klein and said, “you’re not a very good actor, but you could be a good-looking guy. I think I will give you BAD hair so that your looks cannot mask your bad acting.” I think they probably said it with a Russian accent. And I think they were probably part of the Russian mafia. We should deport them.

3. A fully Chinese little girl growing up to be half-Chinese Kristin Kreuk
Kristin Kreuk is Dutch-Chinese according to imdb and in the movie her father was Chinese and her mother non-descript Caucasian. Okay, not exactly faithful to the game, but whatever; I would have forgiven this. Except the picked what was obviously a Chinese little girl to play her at a young age who somehow morphed into a Dutch-Chinese girl when puberty came. Because we all change ethnicity as we get older...wait a minute...

2. Bison transforming from a Thai mob boss to an albino Irishman (who has an Irish accent despite growing up in Thailand...)
Again, I would have accepted the change in origins--they did still have Bison having grown up in Thailand--but if he grew up in the slums of Thailand how did he learn to speak English with an Irish accent? And not a thick one either. But, when the moral of your movie is to stand up when standing isn’t easy, probably you don’t the critical thinking skills necessary to contemplate why this might be a problem for the viewer.

1. That another Streetfighter movie manages to suck more than Mortal Kombat--14 years later
Streetfighter was a vastly superior game to Mortal Kombat. (It’s my blog I get to say what I want.) And yet we have now had TWO Streetfighter movies and they are both so incredibly bad that I’m almost ashamed to love Streetfighter like I do. Why is Mortal Kombat better? 1) They fight. A LOT. 2) There’s an appropriate amount of sexy time possibility. 3) They fight. A LOT. Why is this so hard for Streetfighter to understand? You know what would make me relate more to Chun Li’s character? If she kicked a lot of ass. You know what would make me want to see a sequel? If she kicked a lot of ass. You know what would make me buy the dvd? If she got to have some sexy time or least if the possibility of sexy time existed following the end of the movie. I do not feel my demands are extreme.

So be warned: if you want some awesome martial arts action Streetfighter has failed us once again. Just watch Jacki Chan; he’s always a good time.