Forbidden Kingdom: Review By Josh

The Forbidden Kingdom is a mildly enjoyable but deeply flawed film. Watch it for its martial arts sequences, choreographed by the legendary Woo-ping Yuen (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and starring the genre's two most recognizable stars (to North American audiences, anyway) Jackie Chan and Jet Li. They look fantastic.

But the fact remains that this film is bogged down by a story that is both silly and incomplete. It resembles far too much the campy 80's fantasy films to which it attempts to pay homage without being aware that it ultimately becomes one. The characters mostly work, but are mostly left unexplored. For instance, this tantalizing introduction is given to the villainess, "Summon the witch, the one born of wolves", yet the film goes on to tell us virtually nothing about her. And Jet Li's "Monkey King" is just plain annoying. Also, I couldn't help thinking how Michael Angarano reminded me of a poor-man's Shia Lebouf.

While there are some clever nods to classic Hong Kong cinema, this film fails to live up to the potential for the long anticipated debut pairing of Chan and Li.