News in Film : The Forbidden Kingdom Review

For all the people that aren't hitting the jump to read my review, here's the short and skinny : It's retarded, please rent it.

Now for the more complex piece of this here blog.

I really REALLY wanted to like the movie. From the epic scenery and lush CGI effects, to the awesome crossover of Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Intresting note, they both played two seperate characters each, and the opening credits didn't put one above the other, instead it was displayed like so :

Jackie Chan
e
t
L
i

OK so that was corny. First red flag. Anyways.. I'm not much of a review for movies, and I don't do this too often, but I thought it should be known. The amount of money, time, script, and planning on this was wasted. Don't get me wrong, this would be a fantastic movie to take the kids to, but the "Karate Kid time traveler" plot was uncalled for, and the Monkey King character was ridiculously Saturday Morning Cartoonish. Remember, for the kids...

The fight sequences, the good stuff. OR so I thought. Most of the fighting in the beginning is Jackie Chan doin his drunken master thing. Fun stuff, loved every bit. Then we get to the kid and his training montage complete with cheezy backdrop music. The only fight worth seeing was Jackie and Li duking it out, but even then it was one fight, and too short to care. The rest from there on out are all wires and CGI. It was terrible.

For the Kung Fu enthusiast, you'll appreciate alot of the culture and fighting styles used, but you'll curse them for using CGI and wires. It's not even entirely a feel good movie, or a kung fu hussle, so I don't understand why this even had to been made apart from the crossover.

There's not much I can say without ruining the movie with spoilers, so just let it be know if you're going to take your kid to see this : Great. 3 out of 5 stars, and you'll probably enjoy taking him to see this than Kung fu Panda or whatever the hell is out now. If you're trying to see this to see some sort of action flick, I wouldn't waste my breath, or cash.

2 out of 5 Stars. Why stars anyways? Can I use Snails?