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Benjamin Wood
walrusgod movie reviews
http://www.walrusgod.com

Score: 2.5/5

When it comes to martial arts stars, there is a very short list of those at the top who have been able (or decided to) use their skills to break into Hollywood. Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris (don't laugh, he started his career as a champion martial artist and even trained with Lee) were two of the first. Now, Jackie Chan and Jet Li constitute the top martial artists in movies. Even having said that he's retiring from martial arts, Jet Li has teamed up with Chan for The Forbidden Kingdom.

The story is apparently roughly based on the ancient Chinese story "Journey to the West," while the individual characters (or at least their names) have been taken from Chinese mythology and pulp novels. For a rough synopsis, Jason (Michael Angarano), a young Boston kid, finds an ancient staff in a local Chinese pawn shop which transports him from Boston to a mysterious land. There, he runs into the possibly immortal, always drunk Lu Yan (Chan), who tells him that the staff is to be returned The Monkey King, who needs it to defeat the ruthless Jade Warlord (Collin Chou). On their quest, they run into the young minstrel girl Sparrow (Yifei Liu) and a mysterious monk (Jet Li) .

The Forbidden Kingdom is not overly concerned with the story, delegating it mainly to being told through two or three segments where one of the characters explains what is going on. And, although many action/martial arts movies have dialogue that is nothing special, The Forbidden Kingdom's is especially bad, sometimes even inducing a cringe or two at how bad it actually was. The only good dialogue is the occasional one-liner, uttered mainly by Lu Yan, and the humor is not nearly as prevalent as it should be, considering it is easily the strength of the writing crew. The action is entertaining and fantastical, and serves it's purpose well, being visually impressive and keeping the audience entertained.

Unfortunately, the actors around Jackie Chan and Jet Li are not nearly as charismatic or entertaining as the two stars, and the film suffers in almost every scene they aren't in. The film lags terrifically during the "storytelling" portions, and the centerpieces of the movie, the lengthy action sequences, don't quite compensate for the horrible story pacing and the extremely bad dialogue.

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