Bao 3 qiao jiao wa

Three Hong Kong babes—gym boss Boo (the lovely Chrissie Chow), homeless cutie Miu (Dada Lo) and Boo's love rival TT (Hidy Yu)—accept an offer of work as bodyguards in Malaysia, but once abroad, they find themselves forced to participate in a brutal underground fighting tournament.

I operate on the basis that almost any film featuring really cute oriental chicks kicking ass has got to be worth a watch, but Kick Ass Girls really puts my theory to the test, the film's distinctly Asian-style humour (ie., facial mugging and silly physical gags that are not at all funny) making the whole affair far more painful than any film featuring three kung fu hotties has the right to be.

The first half of the film, which establishes its trio of attractive but tough female characters, is particularly heavy on the crap comedy and almost saw me throwing in the towel; I stuck it out, however, reasoning that things could only get better. Which they do. Marginally.

Once the action kicks in, matters prove slightly more entertaining. The martial arts scenes, in which the battling babes duke it out with some tough looking female opponents, are reasonably well choreographed and a fun finale sees the sexy girls donning S&M gear to make a bid for freedom.

Once again, cute oriental chicks kicking ass make a movie watchable. But it was a close call.

This movie's selling point is of course the promise of getting to see attractive Hong Kong women duking it out on the screen. And yes, there is an audience for that. Either I am not in that particular target audience or I just wasn't enthralled by what "Kick Ass Girls" was selling. This was a rather mundane and pointless movie in my opinion.

The story is about three women who practice martial arts in Hong Kong, who get lured to Malaysia under false pretenses and end up having to do battle in an underground tournament. Can we say "Bloodsport" anyone? "Kick Ass Girls" offered absolutely nothing to the martial arts genre that hadn't already been seen before in similar movies. No, everything here was generic and anything but outstanding.

I was especially impressed with the guitar player in the gym who managed to get violin sounds out of an acoustic guitar. That was just fantastically stupid.

There were some nice enough costumes and make-up for some of the fighters brought into the ring. But that hardly made up for all the stuff that was lacking in the movie.

As for the fight scenes, well they were adequate. And that is actually just about it. It was adequately choreographed but executed in a much too scripted manner. It just lacked a natural flow to it. And it was clear to see that martial arts was not something some of the women were overly familiar with, as they lacked the finesse and grace that comes with years of practice.

All in all, "Kick Ass Girls" is a hollow movie sold of alluring promises to lure in the male audience. And the DVD cover does promise more than the movie did manage to deliver.

First, try to follow this: It's a girl's 30th birthday, apparently old in this culture. She complains about needing clients for a boxing business--signals plot-line. She goes to the gym. Another girl at the gym whines about being dumped, hits on customers, and her and the first girl become business buddies after this one knocks out her ex- boyfriend. That night, the 30-year-old has a birthday party and her old friend shows up. All three girls become friends, get tricked into joining an underground fighting tournament--they call a trafficking syndicate later and this leads to a fight with the traffickers in the end.

Are you confused too? First it's about a newly 30-year-old looking for business and somehow the story arches into something about women being trafficked into slavery--by the way it WAS an underground fighting theme until the director or writer changed their mind about that too.

Too many directions.

A pro to the film: instead of the three main characters being these she-demons with masterful martial arts skills, they are normal women who know self-defense in different martial arts styles. Even then, the character, Miu played by actress Dada Lo fights well one second and then decides she can't fight at all and gets beaten up easily later on. Same with the other characters, but her to a greater extent.

I would not recommend this movie, I'd say to see either Cold Fusion, or Chai Lai Angels: Dangerous Flowers, or the Naked trilogy: Naked Weapon, Naked Soldier, and Naked Killer instead. If you want to see this, have at it.

Others have panned this movie, but I found it quite enjoyable.

Hidy Yu is special and funny.

Is the movie predictable ? Yes ! That isn't bad though.

I will watch this again and again as I bought it on DVD with subtitles.

I enjoyed the humor and I understood it.