SHAUNNY BABY

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008, Scott Prendergast)

We all have our guilty pleasures. Well, not 'guilty' so much as...childhood pleasures. Everybody's got a few completely indefensible choices in their closets, a handful of films where your only defense is that they're "awesome". Off the top of my head, I think Space Jam and Mortal Kombat qualify for me. The latter even makes this paragraph thematically relevant, as it deals with a sort of chosen one engaged in martial arts by all comers, something The Forbidden Kingdom has in abundance. A very '80s film in the Karate Kid-Neverending Story vein, The Forbidden Kingdom is about a white kid fighting bullies and learning life lessons thanks to the teachings of mystical shopowners and exotic Asians...the visuals are competent but little else, and in the acting department, Michael Angarano is bland, and as you know, for actors, Jackie Chan and Jet Li...are really good martial artists, and yeah, like Righteous Kill, there's a certain charm to seeing two legends of a genre interact, but, like De Niro & Pacino, it just makes you lament the fact that they didn't do it in their prime. This fight happens in '94? It's the stuff of legend. Now? It's just fun to imagine and get a taste of the overripe. It's a damn sight more energetic, and thus, more enjoyable than the lifeless Kill, but still, the parallels of recaptured glory are there in full force.

The film's mythology is both overly derivative and oddly nonsensical, seemingly making up their rules as they go along, or more likely, making them up as they half-remember them from other films. I also should mention that the film's journey is Lord of the Rings-y, with a lot of traveling, with Jackie Chan serving as much Gandalf the Grey as Mr. Miyagi. Yay for training montages, yay for walking and fearing evil men on horseback.

It's obvious that the filmmakers know the history of kung fu cinema, as they pack it with references to other, better films and probably a hundred more obscure ones, but it's such a, well, whitewash, it's very wink-wink and lighter in tone than even Karate Kid-style films, if you can believe that, because it wants us to remember The Karate Kid, and wants us to know it remembers it, and that defines the film as a whole. Unless you're about 12, you've seen it all before, and without the forgiving leniency afforded by nostalgia. As I said, the film is energetic and knowledgable, and that makes it more worthwhile than most in 2008. The only real genuine positive I can think is that it's just good enough that perhaps it inspires a future generation of youngsters to take a look into the past, and see some of the fabulous films that inspired this one. Or at least to see Kung Fu Hustle.

Grade: 6.5/10 (C+) / #23 (of 75) of 2008]


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