"The Forbidden Kingdom" (2008) - Movie Review

Casting Jet Li and Jackie Chan in a kung fu film is like getting Al Pacino and Robert De Niro for a crime thriller (which of course is coming in “Righteous Kill”). It is a marked occasion in the kung fu film genre and for them to have a fight sequence is worthwhile for an unscrupulous film before viewing “The Forbidden Kingdom”. Sadly one of my child hood favourites Jackie’s venture with Jet Li went from bad to worse and worse to the unimaginable clichés.

When you run into a film of kung fu in general, it is a universal fact that the martial art is everything and story is to rope in those elemental displays of chaos with accuracy impossible to fathom. The perfection of clumsiness mastered by Jackie Chan is the trade mark fun factor. After Jackie ventured into Hollywood, his comedic capabilities in the stunts were put to nice use in the “Shanghai Noon” and “Rush Hour” franchise (of course “Rush Hour 3” is a disaster). Still the man in great kung fu films as “Police Story” series, “Miracle” (or sometimes called “Mr. Canton and Lady Rose”), “The Drunken Master”, “The Young Master”, “The Defender” and the modern “Who am I?” never was exposed in western world. I thought this is it and it crumbled.

I am not a big fan of Jet Li though because the fun Jackie brings to the screen would be completely missing in Jet Li’s style of fighting. But I like his pace and rapid movements of unbelievable swiftness and deadly factor. While Jet Li does find his arena of expertise in the stunt scenes in “The Forbidden Kingdom”, Jackie misses the tickle bone clumsy prop fighting. And when that gets in your way in a kung fu film, the rest falls apart with over the top predictability and the hate which slowly generates and summits in the end. It is a bad movie.

The film starts with a top of the mountain fight with Jet Li swinging his charms and thus the boy wakes up from his dream. That is Jason (Michael Angarano), a kid obsessed with kung fu movies. And it increased the expectation since as a kid I have always fantasized about the wonderland of harmless cool fighting. He is a regular visitor to a DVD store in China town owned by an old man named Hop played by Jackie.

In the midst of running away from the bullies who use him to steal the shop, he falls off with an old antique staff from the store. He wakes up in a strange land and henceforth he learns the legend of the Monkey King (Jet Li) through a drunkard Lu Yan (Jackie Chan). It is journey, fighting, teaching, some teenage romance, and then some more fighting. Now this is the perfect mix for the film you expect from Jackie Chan and Jet Li, but the fights fail and the charm Jackie brings in all his movies is missing.

Both the masters of martial arts have hearty moments of onscreen friendly enmity which does bring smiles to our face but does not last long. We are well aware of the fact that both the actors are not for serious acting but there are dialogues and acting which goes haywire on many occasions. I am not going to argue the logic of parallel universe existence and a little China existing with characters associated with the film understanding and speaking English at their ease. But these are the passing away mistakes in other movies of Chan and Li when the fights engross you.

And as the film neared its end, I really had confusion whether the makers are making a spoof of kung fu genre movies or are they seriously putting effort to make it worse. The locations are beautiful and the narration along with characters is fantasy land with boring dreams.