Seeing all the negative reviews I just have to write one that contradicts this. People seem to go into this movie with expectations of another Crouched Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This it is not, having trained in 5 different martial arts I could appreciate the fights in this movie a lot more than those in CT,HD though as there are no ridiculous fights in tree tops or moves so fast that they are impossible to pull off...
I love the movie Kung Pow and although that was an intended totally ridiculous movie this one did have some references to it, but it also had a lot of references to Star Wars with the very Obi-Wan like Master, an evil empire chasing the princess and the orchestral score.
Most of the scenes were cut a little short and the actors may never get any Oscars but at least it never felt like the movie was dragging along (LOTR - are we there yet?) and it had adventure, treason, romance, a master and an apprentice, decent not over the top fights, some kind of land pirates, magic, an ancient riddle, and a Chosen One...
I watched the movie with my 16, 18 and 22 year old kids and none of us got bored, at times we good a good laugh with the references to other movies and we enjoyed it, only the lack of a decent ending was a let down but kept us wanting to see the sequel...
It's not a pretentious movie and if you can look at it that way it's really a good one!