Tai Chi Zero

"Tai Chi Zero" is often more distracting than diverting with its everything-goes aesthetic - there are strains of steampunk, manga and silent film comedy, with video-game touches.

"Tai Chi Zero" is loads of fun to watch, especially a battle in which watermelons, bananas and other fruits and veggies serve as flying weapons.

A martial-arts adventure with more video-game and comic-book DNA than the traditional kung fu flick, "Tai Chi Zero" is good, if empty-headed, fun.

Exhausting to watch, Tai Chi Zero is all flash and little substance.

"Zero" is the first part of a trilogy. Part two, titled "Tai Chi Hero," is due in January. The legend is off to a promising start.

Essentially a live-action anime, it sweats rivulets of Tarantino-era digital anxiety from all pores-every kick, punch, pan, and zoom exaggerated for maximum impact.

Fun peppers his cast with Hong Kong action film royalty while filling the screen with crazy titles and text overlays, which almost distract from the problems with the way he and writer Chia-lu Chang have unfortunately structured their film.

Fight scenes in Tai Chi Zero deliver the epic awesomeness of a true kung fu movie, but they are leavened with Jackie Chan-style silliness.

It's one of the strangest films I've ever seen, but Tai Chi Zero is also without a doubt one of the absolute best.

Sort of a kung-fu film through a 'Scott Pilgrim' lens, it is a slight but stylistic romp.