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All Movie Info
Starring:
Jet Li, Jackie Chan, Michael Angarano, Collin Chou, Bingbing Li, Deshun Wang, Mathew Tang, Morgan Benoit, Yifei Liu, Bin Jiang, Shaohua Yang, Xiao Dong Mei, Mathew Tang, Alan Ng, Michelle Du, Yang Jun, Jeffrey Kong, Rui Li, Xiao Keng Ye
Directed By:
Rob Minkoff
Written By:
John Fusco
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The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)
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Movie Review by Jarrod 
April 19th, 2008
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'The Forbidden Kingdom' is not really the kind of movie its trailers make it out to be. It does feature martial arts, and is set in ancient China, and pairs Jackie Chan with Jet Li, but I noticed that Michael Angarano does not appear in many of the previews, at least none that I saw, and I would assume that is because the marketing team probably wanted to avoid revealing that this is not so much an action movie than a fantasy, about a boy from Boston who gets transported back to ancient China, in possession of a mystical staff that holds the power to free a legendary warrior known as The Monkey King (Li), from the clutches of the Jade Warlord (Collin Chou).
This boy is named Jason Tripitikas, and he is a high schooler who likes kung fu films, though they apparently don't help him deal with the bullies who pick on him every day. So, he is unlike Jonathan Brandis in Sidekicks, who gets to meet his idol Chuck Norris, and he is also unlike that kid in Last Action Hero, who ends up hanging out with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bullies drag Jason to a Chinese pawn shop, which they plan on robbing; the owner gets shot, and Jason gets that staff, and is whisked many centuries into the past. There, his journey to save The Monkey King brings him into contact with a trio of traveling companions; The Silent Monk (Jet Li), Lu Yan (Chan), and Golden Sparrow (Yifei Liu). Lu Yan is a throwback to Chan's classic Drunken Master movies, and Golden Sparrow occupies the Ziyi Zhang or Michelle Yeoh role, if we were talking about Crouching Tiger or House of Flying Daggers instead. Why inject a white, English-speaking kid into the mix?
That is beyond me. Angarano, and he is a good actor, just go and watch Snow Angels, spoils everything, I think, because his character sticks out like a sore thumb, and he makes the English of his co-stars sound all the more terrible. He is supposed to be like The Kid in King Arthur's Court, or Bastian from The Never-ending Story, it is up to him to save the mystical world he is plunged into, thwarting the evil schemes of a nasty villain (and the Jade Warlord is comically, over-the-top nasty). Jet Li and Jackie Chan certainly deserve better; in what otherwise may have been a landmark pairing of two genre icons. Li and Chan are both wooden and boring, lacking any kind of noticeable charisma, looking tired and old (especially Chan). Their fight scenes are underwhelming, but then the choreography of the fight scenes is amateurish, nothing dazzling, and certainly nothing as energetic or inventive as what Li could offer in something like Black Mask, or what Chan did consistently for more than 20 years. I would have traded Yifei Liu for Lucy Liu.
The whole movie is sort of a rip-off of The Wizard of Oz, complete with a witch, a palace that looks like it was lifted from the Emerald City, and an eventual realization by Jason that there is no place like home. All that is missing is a dog and a yellow brick road. The silly plot runs out of steam long before the 113-minute running time has expired, in fact, it runs out of steam after about 30 minutes, but I was willing to indulge it and not complain too much until more had happened. Maybe this will get more interesting when I actually get to see Li and Chan in action, when Jason actually gets to China and starts his adventure. But I was wrong. It never picked up, quite frankly. I don't know what the target demographic for this is, adults wanting a serious martial arts epic would find their money more wisely spent on some oldie from Chan's repertoire (any badly dubbed relic from the 70s would suffice, maybe even Rumble in the Bronx)), or even that David Carradine show, or Curse of the Golden Flower, House of Flying Daggers, or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I don't think younger viewers will like it much, either, and won't get the Drunken Master reference.
There a few moments of humor, and Chan is capable of generating laughs through physical shtick (again, with the Drunken Master stuff, or maybe with his ridiculous hair), he could well be parodying himself in these instances. In battling large groups of opponents, the characters are doing what Uma Thurman did in Kill Bill Vol. 1, though there is less blood and fewer severed limbs. How much reliance was there on CGI, wires, and stunt doubles? I cannot say for sure, but Li and Chan certainly are not as agile as they once were, so they probably rely on these things more than they previously did. For the most part, it all feels artificial and shallow, lacking excitement and creativity.
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 | Catherine
Apr 21, 2008 3:42 AM
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| First of all, we all love Chan and Li, Chan is over 50 as to why he looks tired. Li was supposed to quit the business movies ago. We also all know that no preview shows what the real movies are like. So watching the movie will do better justice then seeing a preview and ooing and awing. DUH. |
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