The Paper Tigers screened as a part of the Boston Asian American Film Festival last night, a fest which also boasted a strong documentary slate this year with the likes of 76 Hours, The Donut King and A Thousand Cuts. Between those and the likes of the Centerpiece Narrative Coming Home Again, BAAFF’s varied offerings mostly skewed toward the dramatic and the serious. Not unheard of for any film festival, of course, but more often than not the diamond in the rough is the oddball film that seems most out-of-place with the hyper-critical festival crowd. The Paper Tigers is that film for this fest, and even in a virtual capacity the kung-fu comedy was a standout.
The setup is a familiar one: once-famous kung-fu prodigies Danny, Hing and Jim are now middle-aged has-beens, more likely to injure themselves in combat than anyone else. But when their former master Sifu dies under suspicious circumstances, the washed-up Three Tigers have to reunite for one last fight. Insofar as the setup is Da 3 Bloods or Expendables Minus Guns, Tigers collects the “one last job”, “past their prime” and “getting the band back together” tropes and deploys them within the traditional bounds of the kung-fu comedy, throwing in an equally familiar absentee father subplot for good measure.
Motion State Review 