Fight Clip Club: Beverly Hills Ninja

No one messes with my brother!

When this movie first came out, I had just entered the realm of Japanese martial arts, and by the time I saw it, I was heavily in training in ninpo taijutsu, taijutsu, and classical Japanese jujutsu. I of course appreciated Chris Farley as an excellent (if usually obnoxious) physical comedian, as his brilliant turn in SNL’s famous Chippendale’s audition sketch was and remains some of the best clowning in cinema history. But the premise for this movie sounded tawdry: a white orphan gets raised by a village of ninjas, and proceeds to be a brilliant ninja, exceeding his magical Japanese teachers? Ehh. 

What this movie does, though, is subverts that White Savior stereotype, and does it hilariously. This is no Last Samurai—Haru (as Farley’s character is named) isn’t any good at the ninja arts. He’s so naïve he doesn’t understand that he’s an utter failure at all his ninjaness. His sensei and father gives him a mission mostly to get rid of him. He’s an embarrassment and is just too sweet to understand so. Once he arrives in Beverly Hills, his brother is sent after him to protect him, and all the fight scenes up till this one consist mainly of Haru blundering through, Gobei (his brother) secretly doing all the fighting himself, getting more and more cartoonishly beaten up in the wake of Haru’s clumsiness, until this moment.

Wanna see what I mean? Meet me after the paywall, grasshopper.