Street Fighter makes video game adaptations a punchline again

It’s actually surprising that so few unabashed foot fetishists have directed martial arts movies, considering the sheer amount of kicks to faces they get to film. That particular slice of Venn diagram is now mainly occupied by Kitao Sakurai’s Street Fighter and Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill—and at least Tarantino can frame a foot. Whether it’s trying to shoot streets, fights, or the horndog desires of its filmmaker, Street Fighter merely pratfalls for two excruciating hours of bad jokes, worse combat, and a plot that crumbles under the weight of its character select screen. This year has had a decent number of good video game movies, but every year, it seems, must have its own Borderlands.

Ok, back to the feet. Apologies, but it’s the only notable thing about a video game adaptation that almost feels self-aware in how strictly it follows its peers’ well-worn path to failure. When Eric André, playing ring emcee Don Sauvage, slobbers over the boots of Cammy (Mel Jarnson); or Callina Liang, playing Interpol agent Chun-Li, chokes a woman out with her foot while holding her against a wall; or a villainous David Dastmalchian, playing a far less enjoyable M. Bison than Raul Julia, sniffs Chun-Li’s foot after blocking her kick; or Kyle Mooney, playing some creep lost in the film’s sea of subplots, gets an erection after watching Chun-Li kick some of his co-workers, then gratefully accepts it as his “punishment” when she kicks him in the crotch—well, it’s easy for these moments to distract from the bland nothingness surrounding them. Should’ve named this Feet Fighter and called it a day.

Regular André collaborator Sakurai (he directed André’s Adult Swim show and their prank-filled feature Bad Trip) only had enough creative juice for one fixation, leaving the rest of Street Fighter desperately parched. It doesn’t help that Sakurai and T.J. Fixman’s script devotes the most time to the extensive roster’s least notable and most annoying fighters. It at least makes sense from a brand perspective that charisma-free brothers-in-arms Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo) take center stage, given that they’re the dull gateway brawlers in a menagerie of freaks—though the games’ most outlandish can’t match even the most innocuous Mortal Kombatant. When Street Fighter‘s nervous energy jitters around the duo’s ill-fated return to tournament life—courtesy of M. Bison, who aims to drain the power from strong champions—there is some semblance of a template being adhered to. Clinging to this template is an intolerable amount of Andrew Schulz, a Joe Rogan-lite podcaster whose inexplicable screentime as Ken’s pal Dan seems as much a piece of product placement for the manosphere as the film’s barrage of commercials are for actual brands.

Ken, who’s a has-been when the film starts, has been starring in these commercials, becoming a party-boy hack shilling colas and batteries. The more stoic Ryu spends his time doling out ramen on the street. Both have been scarred by the death of their mentor and a looming mystical darkness surrounding Ryu, which Street Fighter explains in frequent fully-animated flashbacks courtesy of Titmouse, Inc.