Kicking it while it's down

I finished High-Kick Girl just now.

Wow. That was... underwhelming.

Oh, the main hero and heroine were certainly good at karate. I have no doubt of that. Neither are going to win acting awards, but that was never an expectation in the film.

It was just... not exciting.

The fights were straightforward. The villains were entertaining and ridiculous. The film held true to most martial arts movie cliches (the enemy comes at you one-on-one unless it's really tactically to the hero or heroine's advantage to hit the entire group somehow).

The karate movements were good and not very flashy, which I can admire as a former karate student. The redundant slow-motion repeats (sometimes three times) were extremely unnecessary and kind of annoying.

The preaching was worse than the last door-to-door Bible thumper I dealt with (albeit with a different subject matter).

The trash-talking from the stick-like 90-pound heroine was entertaining for a while, but that was about it.

It's a definite rental.

Now I have to work up the enthusiasm to return to Assault Girls at some point.

Maybe after some more "Arrested Development".