High Kick Girl! (2009)

Unbelievably bad

This movie was a complete waste of time for the choreographers, the actors and for us, the damn viewers. If you want to watch High Kick Girl, watch it for 40 minutes, then turn it off, because after that it becomes High Kick Sensei, and I can assure you that it's a really bad movie and you don't wanna watch it.

When you read the words "High Kick Girl!" and sees a high school girl doing a high kick in the cover, you don't set your expectations high. You hope to watch some nice Karate Fights with an OKAY plot that hopefully don't spoil the fights.
But they managed to do it!! It is so bad that you can't even pay attention to the fights anymore, and by the end of the movie, the directing and the writing gets progressively bad to the point where the fights are unwatchable.

The first half of the movie is OKAY, if you ignore the really annoying replays in the scenes. It's nice, you got some crazy karate girl that is hunting black belts around the town, as an excuse to kick some ass. A good enough plot, if you ask me.
I could go on and on about how they wasted a decent idea and how they could have done a mediocre movie and get away with it, but they were completely lost '-'

*I'm rating it a 3/10 in honor to the actors and choreographers

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Despite a solid performance from Rina Takeda and a handful of well-executed action set pieces, High Kick Girl ultimately falls short of its potential. The film leans too heavily on slow motion and instant replay, padding out repetitive fight sequences that lose their impact by the third act.

At just 81 minutes, it still manages to feel bloated, filled with unnecessary filler while more compelling plot threads go underdeveloped. Character work is minimal, making it difficult to stay engaged as the story drags on, leading to wandering attention by the final stretch.

The rushed ending does little to resolve this, leaving the impression that little has truly changed. What begins as an intriguing premise ends up feeling like a missed opportunity.

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