Forbidden Kingdom Review

CURRENT RATINGS:

 7/10

Movie:

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

END MOODS/CURRENTS

| Entry | The long awaited collaboration between the two biggest names in martial arts cinema... The problem with a movie like this is that invariably the anticipation will be uber high and no matter what, people will be disappointed. I think Jet and Jackie anticipated this and specifically made an attempt to limit expectations in advance via their blogs...

note, this scene does not actually apear in this movie...

The fact is that this film is a US production, about an American teenager who gets magically transported from modern times into a mythical Chinese past - on a mission to return a magical staff to the Monkey King (and bring order to the world... of course).

In that respect this movie reminded me a lot of similar 'fairy tale' type movies aimed at youth audiences.... think the 1980 'Flash Gordon' or Arnold's 'Last Action Hero' and maybe a bit of Narnia too... all of which are notgreat cinema, but they have some redeeming qualities that make them entertaining to watch. I went into this movie only expecting something along those lines and I was actually pleasantly surprised, it was better than I expected.

Definitely cheesy at points, the production quality was pretty decent, the scenery of course was breathtaking.

Except i think they filmed some of the desert scenes in the exact same place as 'Escape from Huang Shi'.

But I thought that the martial arts was what set this apart from those average children's fantasy films... There is actually quite a lot of fighting and for the most part its pretty well done. In that respect I think people who are going just for the fighting won't be toodisappointed.

Actually the action kind of surprised me. This film is actually more 'violent' than a lot of Jackie's movies and more violent than other 'youth action' fantasy type films. People getting chopped w/ swords and what not.

The supporting cast is good too, Li Bingbing, Collin Chou and Liu Yifei are all entertaining enough to keep your eyes fixed on the screen even when there's no fighting going on. And Yuen Woo Ping (and some stunt doubles) do a good job keeping up with Jet and Jackie in the action department too.

But I have to say, as an American who practice(d) chinese martial arts for over 10 years and enjoys Asian cinema quite a bit,
I can tell that the screen play was written by/for an American fans of 'kung fu cinema' rather than for the average Chinese or HK movie goer.... the Chinese mythology is all kind of mashed together and there's Bruce Lee and Shaw Brothers references sprinkled in.... In the theater in HK we watched it in, there were some people laughing at the unintentionally funny parts, but that happens with films that take themselves much more seriously too...

In Conclusion - I think this movie is worth checking out, but please don't expect Drunken Master vs Wong Fei Hung. I'll give it a 7/10 as a martial arts fantasy. Jet and Jackie should have made this movie 10 or 15 years ago, let's hope we don't have to wait 10 more for another one!

ps - to quote Ken Brockman from 'Tale of Two Springfields' - "We are all taking showers!"