Review of The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) by Pauls. — 19 Apr 2008

I wanted to like this movie -- I really, really did. Jackie Chan and Jet Li are (well, were) the best at martial arts action films, and the prospect of them as a kind of chop-socky Odd Couple was irresistible.

I'd been looking forward to it for months, and went to see it on opening day. What I didn't realize was that this was neither a martial arts comedy (like Chan is known for) or an epic (like Li has done) but rather, at its core, a children's movie.

It's like The Karate Kid meets The Neverending Story -- complete with training montages, "real world" bookends, and a gawky hero that was a little too aggressively banal to like. There are moments of excellence; Jet Li's exuberance as the trickster Monkey King is genuinely delightful, and both the good-girl and bad-girl characters are ridiculously attractive.

In the end, though, all I could think about was how much I would've enjoyed the film if I were 11. To be fair, parents of 11-year-olds should definitely consider this one for a Saturday afternoon.

The rest of us, however, should save our money.