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© St. Petersburg Times, published January 17, 2002
Spreading himself too thin?
All the crouching tigers and hidden dragons in the world can't save Kung Pow: Enter the Fist, a martial arts spoof that doesn't even look promising in preview trailers. Steve Oedekerk is the screenwriter; one look at his resume (Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Patch Adams, Nothing to Lose, the second, nonfunny Ace Ventura flick) pegs the limitations of his humor. Oedekerk also directs Kung Pow: Enter the Fist and drastically cuts corners by incorporating loads of action footage from a 1976 kung fu flick, Savage Killers, with his freshly produced crudeness. Oedekerk also stars as "the Chosen One," avenging the death of his parents.
Cuba Gooding Jr. is a frozen fish out of water in Snow Dogs, playing Ted Brooks, a Miami dentist who inherits a team of sled dogs trained for the Iditarod challenge in Alaska. Ted would prefer baking in the sun at home until a crotchety mountain man (James Coburn) schemes to take away the dogs. Coburn and Gooding each won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in recent years, and this is how it pays off: doing Disney shtick with mugging animals. The film was inspired by a true story documented in Gary Paulsen's book Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod. The movie, however, was penned by the same duo who wrote Cool Runnings plus three more writers. That's either a lot of wasted talent or the untalented getting more breaks than deserved.