THE IMPOSSIBLE KID (1982) - 007 if he was short !!!

 Directed by - Eddie Nicart

Screenplay by - Greg B Macabenta from a story by Cora C Ridon

Starring - Weng Weng as Agent 00

PLOT - Agent 00 is the top agent for Interpol. He has a licence to kill. Men want to be him and women want to be with him. He is a kung-fu expert, his hands and fists are deadly weapons. He's the man you want on your side in times of trouble.  He also happens to be only 2 feet and 9 inches tall.

When a terrorist organisation led by the mysterious, masked criminal mastermind - Mr X - starts holding to ransom the lives of top industrialists, it is up to Agent 00 to stop the diabolical scheme and save the day...

DIALOUGE - Mr X - "You don't know me. You don't have to know me, except for the fact that I am the leader of a worldwide organisation with affiliations all over the world !!!" - Well, you'd kind of hope he did have affiliations worldwide, him being the head of a worldwide organisation and everything...

PERFORMANCES - It's kind of difficult to rate the performances in this movie with it being heavily dubbed by voiceover artists as essentially it means that you're watching only half of the original actors performance to begin with. Suffice it to say that all of the dubbed voices are massively inappropriate for the appearance of the actors physically playing the roles. Even Weng Weng himself is dubbed with a macho sounding standard "action hero" type voice, totally at odds to the high pitched tones of his real life voice.

The only performance that can stand up to scrutiny in these conditions is that of Weng Weng himself as he is such a natural star. His martial arts fighting is fluid and fast moving, he scrambles and gallops and swaggers across the screen like a man three times his height. He also does his own stunts - leaping off heights which wouldn't be that high up for someone of a standard height but to him, at under 3 feet tall,  must have seemed like huge drops. Yet drop he does, leaping at full pelt with the grace of a cat. It's, literally, all a matter of perspective. Watching him is amazing, that awesomeness easily outweighs the one joke comedy that the concept of a "midget James Bond" would otherwise engender.

He's certainly a plucky little fellow, sadly though, it seems appropriate to point out here that little Weng's real life story was not to be a happy one.

Ernesto Dela Cruz was born in the Philippines in 1957, when he was born he was only the size of a Coca-Cola bottle and wasn't expected to survive. However survive he did, overcoming all odds. 

His family where penniless and he grew up in a mud hut in the poverty stricken shanty town of Baclaran. Young Weng developed an interest in martial arts and learnt Karate. It was his skill that got him noticed by Phillipino film studios and soon he became an unconventional movie star.

Sadly, however, he had unscrupulous managers and he was paid only a fraction of what he should have been. His management eventually left him high and dry after totally ripping him off. He slid into obscurity and returned home to live with his family in total poverty, where he died in 1992 at the age of just 35 years old. Probably the only consolation in this sorry tale is that he at least seemed happy enough to act in his films, he certainly looks like he's enjoying himself. The poor little fellow was, literally, having the time of his life.

SFX - Very little. Unless you count Weng himself who could be argued was something of a living special effect in his own right.

SEX AND VIOLENCE  - Weng cops off with a number of nubile, full sized, young ladies, he even has his very own Miss Moneypenny. There's no bedroom scenes, just romantic kisses.

The fights are brilliant in this film, As I said, Weng hurls himself around the screen with wild abandon and great agility. His main combat tactic seems to consist of running between his opponents legs, hitting them in the testicles from behind, drop kicking them in the face whilst they are floored (usually cupping thier aching balls), then standing on thier throats and digging in his heels until they submit. You see him do this several times and it's great. It never gets old. There's a brilliant scene where he is attacked in his gym and takes down several gang members whilst pretty much wrecking the gym in the process.

There's an end battle on a boat, where Weng weilds a submachine gun, it's nearly as big as he is, and engages in a gun fight. It's a strangly bloodless affair, baddies are riddled with machine gun fire at close quarter without a single bullet hole on thier clothes or any blood whatsoever being in evidence. Considering this was, ostensibly, intended as a family movie it isn't totally surprising.

RATING  - This movie is great. It has action, great cheesy villains and an engaging, likeable lead star. The soundtrack itself bears mentioning  - the main theme tune really does sound like it came from a 70's era Roger Moore Bond film and is very catchy. There is also a piece of music that is BLATANTLY ripped off from the Pink Panther theme tune, I really don't know how they didn't get sued by Henry Mancini.

Overall this movie is a hell of a lot of fun, and whilst knowledge of how Weng was treated in real life does leave a nasty taste in the mouth, it wasn't the fault of the film makers themselves, just the horrible, greedy arseholes who held the pursestrings, as is unfortunately the case in many things.

Overall rating - 4 and a half dropkicks in the Scrotum out of 5. See this and appreciate Weng Weng for we'll never see his like again.