The Forbidden Kingdom

So, here's the setup: a young man believes that there must be more to life than he's seeing. In fact, he lives in something of a fantasy world. While trying to impress a girl, he's shown up and knocked around by the local bully. Through a mechanism of the plot, he's transported to a magical realm where he has many adventures, fins love, and becomes a man. He returns to his own world, knocks around the bully, and claims his manhood.

Man, wasn't STARDUST a great picture?

But we aren't here to talk about STARDUST. We're here to talk about THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM. In THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, the mundane bully is so vicious and such a bad actor that he sucks all the fun out of the movie before it can even properly get underweigh (That's how it should be spelled, dammit. The phrase comes from "weighing anchor," not "waying anchor."). Granted, there's a dream sequence of Jet Li doing a fun Monkey King, but I'm tellin' ya, that framing story erased the goodwill the bit earned. Even if it was set in hardscrabble South Boston.

OK, so the framing story sucks. But what about the adventures in the magical realm? I started that part with my arms crossed, wondering why a Jackie Chan / Jet Li teamup even needed a white guy. But then Jackie showed and busted out the "drunken boxing" moves he hadn't used since his last movie with fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, DRUNKEN MASTER II (a film which, by the way, I discovered through the Balcony back in the '90s). So forget about the framing story. Forget about the white guy, even though he was the protagonist. Here was Jackie getting his DRUNKEN MASTER on! That's worth the price of admission, right there! Then Li showed up again, and we got what we came for: a Chan / Li battle, choreographed by Yuen.

Y'know what? I don't care if these guys are getting older and require more quick-cuts to mask their diminished athletic ability. They're still two of the very best, cinematographer Peter Pau (CTHD) is among the very best, and Yuen is the very best. That's worth your rental fee, right there.

Unfortunately, however, THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM isn't an hour and a half of Chan and Li being awesome. It keeps having to make room for this extraneous white guy. Michael Angarano, whom I loved in SKY HIGH, is fine, but I just couldn't see a reason for his character other than marketing. Nor could I see a reason for Yifei Liu, the love interest, other than to have someone to stand around and look pretty. And someone tell Krrish that BingBing Li, as the Bride with White Hair, stole his fan.

This movie could have been great. It could have been awesome. It could have been, well, STARDUST with kung fu. But it's worth renting only if you're a fan of the genre, and even then it's worth renting only for the genre elements. Let's hope that the next time Chan and Li team up, it's for a better project.