The Forbidden Kingdom: Bad Script, Bad Acting, Bad Score, Otherwise Okay Movie

Studio exec 1: Hey, Jackie Chan and Jet Li have never been in a movie together before.* We should do a movie where they team up.

Studio exec 2: That's brilliant! But the main character should be played by a white kid who can't act.

At least, I'm guessing that's how the greenlighting process for The Forbidden Kingdom must have gone. At the top of the list of missed opportunities in this movie is deciding to have two of the great martial arts movie actors of all time upstaged by a dopey American kid, Michael Angarano. This casting decision is necessitated by a classic save-the-natives plot, as in The Last Samurai, in which an earnest American has to save good Asians from bad Asians. It's offensive on any number of levels, but mostly just patently ridiculous to see a kid who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag try to save Jet Li and Jackie Chan.

Martial arts movies aren't so much a genre as a medium -- in the past few years, we've seen martial arts movie as melodrama (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), biopic (Fearless), costume drama (House of Flying Daggers), and Western (Kill Bill). The Forbidden Kingdom is a kids' movie, basically a cross between The Karate Kid and The Neverending Story, though not quite as good as either one. It's not bad for what it is, but it could have been so much more: a movie with Jet Li and Jackie Chan should be a martial arts Casablanca, and it ends up being closer to Surf Ninjas.

The main character is a kid who loves his chop socky flicks, and the movie's a bit of a mishmash: after a dream sequence, it opens in a Chinese antique store, familiar from movies from Gremlins to Big Trouble in Little China, run by Jackie Chan in old-age makeup. Some time after an early look at the video box for The Bride With the White Hair, we meet one of the movie's main villains, a beautiful witch with white hair she uses as a whip. Jackie Chan's first fight scene is in the drunken boxing style, recalling his famous role in The Legend of Drunken Master. Both Li and Chan play two different characters, Chan as a drunken scholar and as the store owner who sends the boy on his quest, and Li both as a monk and as the mythical hero the boy must save.

There's a lot of plot in the movie, mostly in lengthy narrated exposition scenes -- there's a magical staff which transports the kid from South Boston to medieval China, an army of evil English-speaking immortals who want it back, an immortal emperor who can help the kid get home, a pretty orphan who wants to avenge her parents' death... well, basically, everyone who fights Li and Chan is bad, and everyone who helps them is good.

The boy eventually learns how to fight -- the lack of a great training sequence is another missed opportunity -- and the beautiful orphan has a few moves of her own. Fortunately, their love story is left mostly undeveloped, as their lack of chemistry rivals that of Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman in the Star Wars prequels. And while the orphan and the boy do pitch in on the fight scenes, the camera wisely keeps most of its attention on Li and Chan, the real stars of the show.

The cinematography oscillates from gorgeous to indifferent, as the frequently greenscreened backgrounds occasionally stun and occasionally bore. Cinematographer Peter Pau, who also worked with martial arts choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping on Crouching Tiger, does a good job of capturing the fight scenes, but seems to lose interest on some of the panoramas. Far worse is David Buckley's score, which is sweeping, insistent, and thuddingly mediocre, and really should have been done by a Chinese composer like Tan Dun (who was behind the brilliant scores for Hero and also Crouching Tiger).

The script, by Hidalgo scribe John Fusco, is similarly banal. Chinese folk mythology is a rich tradition to mine, but not when you give the main villain lines like, "Did you think you had a chance? I don't think so," or have the orphan talk about herself in third person for no apparent reason. The script's problems are exacerbated by some uncomfortably stiff line readings by a mostly Chinese cast who first speak Mandarin when we meet them, but then unaccountably switch to flat, accented English.

Those shortcomings aside, however, what's most important is the Jet Li/Jackie Chan fight that has been promised by every movie poster for the past months and fantasized about in every video store for the past 20 years. And their brawl, in a Buddhist temple with stone statues that get smashed in the fracas, is well worth seeing, even if the stars, now 43 and 54, respectively, are no longer in their primes athletically or onscreen. Still, it's eye-popping. Much of it takes place as the two are both holding onto the magical staff, beating each other with their other three limbs as they dance and kick and jump and run.

Most of the rest of the major action scenes are either fought against scores of attacking enemies, or are simulcast, so that we watch one protagonist locked in battle for a minute or two, and then switch to another, so that we don't miss anything. The pyrotechnics are impressive, though in these scenes a little magic and high-wire flying goes a long way.

Simply seeing Li and Chan onscreen together is a pleasure, the sort of easy happiness that is fully expected but nonetheless rewarding, like watching the coffee shop scene from Heat a 200th time just to see Al Pacino and Robert De Niro enjoying each other's company. The charisma of Jet Li's fist is such that when he's punching someone, it's almost impossible not to be transfixed. But while his fist is agreeably diverting, particularly on the big screen, this is far from his best movie. Feel free to see the movie if you want, but after you leave the theater, be sure to rent Fist of Legend, Once Upon a Time in China, or Fearless. You'll thank me in the morning.

* The reason why Jackie Chan and Jet Li have never been in a movie before? According to Richard Meyers, in his commentary to Once Upon a Time in China, the feud started in a movie called High Risk, in which Jackie Chan was supposed to star with Jet Li, but which ended up featuring Li and an actor named Jacky Cheung essentially parodying Chan. As a result of that movie, Chan never worked with Li, until Forbidden Kingdom. back to top

Comments

[Alyonka]

I really liked the story you've written here and that's so true if to talk about fun movie (even if it's just theoretically funny =) ). But what to think if the movie is planned as serious pic., with a kind of pretension?
Cinema is a luxurious sort of art. With lots of sides in its emotionality. Joining the people of different cultures, characters and priorities. In addition with constant development. It's able to talk as about the masterpieces of retrospective as about new ideating pics endlessly. I mean under "ideating" not a movie-manifest, but creation with a Thought and Feeling. It's very interesting to watch the birth of new genres.
For example such as Globalized Twaddle of Showbiz, being the mix of wellknown and arrived at grotesque - drama, action, adventures, historical movie and thriller. Show-fairytales justify its name quite right becouse of curve subject matter, distorted line of love or falsified historical events. Or all together.
But that's not important that there isn't any art value and even a hint at Thought, becouse potential gain and business look denies the moral persuations.
Of course it will be geographically incorrect, historically offensive, but surely - awardly possible, becouse 50-years old Jullete must be encouraged. Here she came for statuette, didn't recognize her? It's normal, as special effects made her a girl better than real on a screen!
What producers want to say by creating such pics and why watchers have to see that stays an enigma.

[AlexRemington]

Pretentious movies can be enjoyable too. The trouble is when movies that ought to be fun get pretentious -- like the Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions.

[superlive]

Last week Jet Li won the Best Actor Hong Kong Film Award for playing the protagonist-villain in The Warlords (2007). Let's see if that movie gets US widescreen release.

[jrb35]

"This casting decision is necessitated by a classic save-the-natives plot, as in The Last Samurai, in which an earnest American has to save good Asians from bad Asians."

I must object to your description of The Last Samurai. Tom Cruise's character is mainly a witness to the end of the Samurai and doesn't "save good Asians from bad Asians." I've spent some time in Japan and everyone I talked to about movies told me how much they LOVED The Last Samurai. I had the impression it was because the film was respectful of Japanese history and culture. It didn't resort to cliches or stereotypes. Also, many PC critics have attacked the film, falsely claiming that Hollywood made the "last samurai" a white guy who saves the Asians. WRONG! The great Ken Watanabe is THE last samurai. Tom Cruise is the outsider who meets him and learns of his story.

[tasukibeth1]

I saw it last night - it's a okay movie as long as you're willing to turn off your inner critic. The instant you start looking for flaws, though, you're in for a long night.

[Aleka]

You know...I think it sad when someone becomes so jaded they can't enjoy a fun movie - for being a fun movie.

We went to see this yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed it, every minute. It's not that I -couldn't- pick it apart if I wanted to - its that I don't see why I would want to ruin it for myself.

The thing was great fun! It didn't take ITSELF nearly as seriously as this guy does, LMAO.

And isn't FUN why we go to the movies?

[AlexRemington]

I enjoy fun movies. This was only a somewhat fun movie. Jet Li and Jackie Chan have both made a whole lot of movies that are much more fun. If you liked this one, go see them.

[vallon]

Other than learning that Mr. Remington hates Hayden Christiansen (or something) and thinks that Jet Li is past his prime, I didn't find this review very helpful. Paging Roger Ebert!

[AlexRemington]

I'm sorry. Does this help? Other than the fight scenes, the movie sucked -- the acting, script, and score were all terrible, the cinematography was occasionally pretty bad too, and the plot was patronizing. The fight scenes were pretty good. What more do you need to know?