It takes a special talent to pull of the martial arts comedy; you have to be equally talented at kicking ass and taking laughs. But if you’re great at it, you end up a comedy legend like Jackie Chan or Steven Chow. The Paper Tigers goes for Police Story or Kung Fu Hustle; it’s not as memorable as those films, but it is pretty fun at times, and benefits from decades of material to mine its humor from.
Sifu Cheung (Roger Yuan) is a martial arts master. He trains his “3 tigers” to carry on his legacy: Danny (Alain Uy), Hing (Ron Yuan), and Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins). Over the years, the Sifu and his tigers drift apart. That is, until the day where Sifu is murdered by a mysterious figure. Now middle aged men, Danny, Hing, and Jim reunite with the help of their “rival” Carter (Matthew Page) to figure out what the hell happened to their Sifu, and maybe become friends again.
Most movies about aging martial artists have them either going out in a blaze of glory or working their way back to their peak. The Paper Tigers bravely dares to stick to the real world here: Danny, Hing, and Ron are past their primes, and they really can’t get back to who they were at their best. So each villain they face they either get their ass kicked or win on almost blind luck. The movie comments on kung fu movies of the past, having characters roll eyes at every fortune cookie saying, usually calling out the hypocrite who’s saying it. The best parts of the movie revolve around Matthew Page’s Carter: a walking living cultural appropriation machine that believes in his own hype, which is endlessly mocked by the tigers.
Like Steven Chow movies, The Paper Tigers tries to have it’s moon cake and eat it too. While deconstructing the martial arts movie, we also get pieces of a decent one as well. The fights walk that tricky line of being bad but engaging most of the time, as our hampered tigers try to learn to fight within their limits. There’s some little lessons here and there, like how to deliver a perfect punch, or what a good kick sounds like that martial arts movies fans like me eat up. The final fight is equal parts silly and exhilarating, as our tigers try to use whatever skills are at their disposal to overcome a superior foe. In general, the film walks a fine line between lampooning and homaging, sometimes stumbling too much to either side, but never fully careening off course.
The Paper Tigers almost had something special, just like the lead characters. But if you’re a fan of action comedies, or strange use of martial arts action, the 3 tigers will win their way into your heart. Plus, Matthew Page has a career of playing unironic “white guy in Asian martial arts film” characters as long as he wants to.