Having just watched Forbidden Kingdom, I cringe and wish it was more aptly named, Forgotten Kingdom.

It was unbearably stupid for a show that I put so much hope on. Jet Li, Jackie Chan,… COME ON! I expected a whole lot more from them! I guess if I looked at it from the perspective of a 6 year old, it would probably have played out a lot better for me. Currently as a cynical 25-year old, all I see is a goofy, clichéd B-grade kung-fu movie with a storyline that is as strong as Micheal Angarano’s acting (it isn’t).

Major deal breakers for me were ;

• Jackie Chan’s atrocious make-up job as an old man.
• Jackie Chan’s atrocious dreadlocks, must be some new fad in ancient China.
• Pan-dimensional travel storyline to return the monkey god’s rod.
• Western bastardization of an otherwise pretty good Chinese tale.
• Mind boggling kung-fu training montage which turns a weakling white-boy into a ruff-n-tuff kung-fu master.
• Weak boy takes on bullies? Very original.
• Stupid looking villains with crazy powers.
• Jet Li’s atrocious english.
• Characters that just pop-out of nowhere and join the party.
• heck, this list can go on forever.

Haish,… it is indeed a pity. The female love interest acted by Liu Yifei was somewhat eye candy but her character could have been removed and none could have told the difference. Even the fight scenes were lousy. Either Jackie Chan’s getting too old or he’s relying too much on his rope-team. Some of the flying bits were quite absurd.

So much for their first collaboration.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.