The big deal here is that martial arts stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li appear together for the first time. Chan has shifted between Chinese-language and American fare, but his best-known movies, like the Rush Hour series, emphasize comic elements as much as action. Li has also split his career between Chinese films, like the mythical Fearless and Hero, and mainstream Hollywood action films such as War and Cradle 2 the Grave, but isn’t at all known for comedy. So I was curious to what approach a movie with both would take, and the answer seems to be a little of everything.
Presumably helping to sell the movie to a younger audience is the presence of Michael Angarano as a kid who, in a remarkably cheesy opening segment, is magically transported from present-day Boston to long-ago China. I liked Angarano in Snow Angels, but here I kept thinking he was Shia LaBeouf. Maybe that was because his character was so petulant, though. At first he wanders around confused, with everybody speaking English. Encountering Chan’s character, he goes, “I can’t understand you,” like everyone’s being rude by not speaking modern American. But then Chan says, “That’s because you’re not listening,” and magically everyone now speaks English. And so the rude teen learns about the mythical Monkey King (Li) and his battle against an evil warlord, and becomes the student of the old master (Chan). There’s practically a Karate Kid homage, although luckily no one is forced to catch flies with chopsticks. The movie also vaguely recalls Chan’s old role as the drunken master; his character is supposed to be eternal, but only so long as he drinks.
Li has a double role as a fighting monk, and the fourth member of the anti-evil team is Sparrow, a revenge-seeking, lute-playing lass, because you always need an attractive girl. Oddly, although she has learned English like all of the other Chinese, she has sadly failed to learn first-person pronouns and so refers to herself as “she” or “her.” Li’s monk is philosophical in that he warns Sparrow about how her desire for vengeance can backfire, and that’s about as deep as the movie gets. She ignores the monk’s counsel, and when Chan mockingly calls him “master of sensitivity,” that’s almost as funny as it gets. The plot is a very simple good-versus-evil one. Chan does about three times as much kung fu as in his last three Hollywood films. Every significant character gets to fight, including an evil Jade Warrior who uses her long hair to lasso her opponents. The action scenes include realistic ones and also fantasies with flying effects. (Immortal characters know magic.) They’re fine, but none is as outstanding as the best ones in Fearless or Hero. But then, director Rob Minkoff’s best-known previous work was directing the Stuart Little movies and the Lion King. This makes sense, as the movie is simple enough to be enjoyed by children. (The violence is mostly mild, but there are bloodless stabbings.) The Forbidden Kingdom seems composed of parts of other movies and isn’t more than the sum of those parts, but is better than Chan’s lame Rush Hour 3 or Li’s turgid War, the stars’ most recent US releases.
IMDB link
viewed 4/20/08; reviewed 4/21/08
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