The very first trailer I saw for The Forbidden Kingdom emphasized that the movie was about a young, modern day teenager in love with martial arts movies who somehow gets transported back into ancient China, and gets to go on an incredible adventure with two martial arts masters, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Every trailer and advertisement I saw after that completely dropped the "young, young modern day teenager" angle, and focused solely on the sure-fire audience drawing power of Chan and Li appearing in the same movie for the first time. It was a wise decision on the part of the marketing people, and I only wish the filmmakers had followed the same logic.

Michael Angarano (from Sky High) plays the kid who the film mainly focuses on. We never learn much about his character, named Jason Tripitikas, except that he's addicted to bootleg kung fu movies, likes to shop at a rundown Chinatown store run by an elderly man named Old Hop (played by Jackie Chan, unrecognizable under layers of make up), and that he's a frequent target for violent thug bullies. Oh, and don't worry, we later learn from dialogue that he comes from a single parent home, so the movie complies with the unwritten rule of Hollywood that young protagonists must have only one parent. Jason is pressured by the bullies to help them break into Old Hop's store one night, where they proceed to shoot the kindly old man and loot the place. As the old man lays wounded, he begs Jason that he protect a mystical staff that he keeps in a back room. Jason grabs the staff, and while he's trying to escape from the bullies, he somehow finds himself transported back in time by the power of the staff, and winds up in ancient China.

Here's where the film's real plot begins, and the audience's interest starts to grow. Not long after arriving in China, Jason meets an immortal drunken master fighter named Lu Yan (Jackie Chan again), who informs him that the staff he carries once belonged to a mischievous mystical fighter called the Monkey King (Jet Li). The Monkey King was turned into stone by the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou), and can only be returned to normal if the staff is returned to him. Of course, the Jade Warlord immediately hears that the staff has returned, and sends his soldiers out to cover the land searching for it. Jason and Lu Yan set out to find the Monkey King, and are later joined up with a beautiful young fighter named Golden Sparrow (the lovely Yifei Liu), who has reasons of her own for fighting the Jade Warlord, and a silent and noble monk (Jet Li again) who has been on a quest for the staff for years. It seems that returning the staff to the Monkey King is the only way that Jason can return home, and in a later scene when he asks a mystical being that he just wants to go home, it takes a superhuman effort not to think of clicking your heels three times, and saying "there's no place like home".

That's because The Forbidden Kingdom really does boil down to a sort of chop-socky take on The Wizard of Oz. Replace the Witch with the Jade Warlord, and the flying monkeys with some nameless soldiers and a woman who can stretch her hair out and use it as a weapon (Li Bingbing), and you get the idea. Despite a running time that nearly hits two hours, the movie is fast paced and never really slows down long enough to take it all in. That's too bad, because there is some lovely China scenery throughout (the film is a joint effort between Hollywood and China, so they were able to shoot on location in a lot of scenes). Jason barely has time to take in the fact that he's traveled back in time before he's teaming up with Lu Yan, and escaping on horseback from the Jade Warlord's soldiers. At least the movie gives us some impressive fight sequences to enjoy, many of which are long enough for the audience to savor. Director Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, the Stuart Little films) knows what we're here for, and gives us an extremely satisfying and lengthy sequence where Chan's Lu Yan does battle with Li's Silent Monk when they first meet each other. Seeing these two masters go up against each other allows us to forget about the movie's plotting problems, and just revel in true fanboy glee. It's too bad there's never quite a sequence quite as satisfying as this one afterward.

Sadly, the screenplay by John Fusco (Hidalgo) concentrates too much on the modern day Jason, and dopey dialogue that is usually delivered by actors who speak English as a second language, which makes it sound even worse. (Sample dialogue exchange: "I will kill you". "Not if I kill you first".) Despite the majority of the ad campaign concentrating solely on Jackie Chan and Jet Li, the first trailer I saw got it right. This is Michael Angarano's movie, Chan and Li are just along for the ride in minor supporting roles. The movie makes a big miscalculation by centering a vast majority of the action and the fighting around Angarano's Jason character. He's just not as much fun to watch. That's not to say that Chan and Li's characters don't get to see any action, they just never get their own fight scene devoted only to them after they first meet. Any other fight they have is interrupted by having the movie cutting away back to Jason and his fight. At least Chan and Li seem to be having fun with the film, and are full of energy in their fighting. Jet Li, in particular, seems to be having a ball during his scenes playing the Monkey King, despite how ridiculous he looks in that half man-half primate get up. Both of these men are the key to the film's limited success, as it only works whenever they are allowed to do their thing. When they're not fighting, they're usually reduced to arguing, or playing gross-out gags on each other. A scene where Jet Li's Monk gives Chan's Lu Yan a "golden shower" made me think that the monk studied under MTV's Jackass as well as the great martial arts masters.

The Forbidden Kingdom is too small in scope, and doesn't give us enough of what we want, but it's not a terrible movie. It is terribly disappointing, though. It's talented Asian cast is given little chance to shine, allowing more time for the far less interesting Michael Angarano to take over the movie. He doesn't hold our interest in quite the way his co-stars do, and the film winds up going flat because of it. If they had just focused more on the stuff that worked, or maybe cast a more charismatic young lead, this movie could have really been something. This is one time when the filmmakers should have listened to the ad department guys as to who the movie should be centered on.

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