First off, it's good to be review new movies again, I haven't reviewed a movie for a bit, but anyway 'Forbidden Kingdom' I'm going to be blunt right off the bat, this was the shittiest piece of karate kid bullshit I had to sit through. Seriously go see this on bootleg or something! And I'll explain why.
Let's start at the concept, the idea is Jet Li and Jackie Chan on screen together for the first time in a grand telling of a world famous Chinese folktale. Great friggin idea, two of the greatest martial art giants of our generation together for the first time-- fighting side by side, which is surprising that this didn't happen earlier in the prime of their careers like ten years ago. Anyway that is a great concept, Jet Li and Jackie are huge. This will be the martial arts movie to end all martial arts movies. You got these two huge mega-Hong Kong action guys in your cast, "AWESOME, PEOPLE WILL SHIT BRICKS FOR IT!! but....Who that hell do we get to direct it?"
"Oh we've got great directors who want to do this project, Ronny Yu (Fearless) and Tsui Hark (Seven Swords), all the seasoned action directors want in". But NO! "No, let's give it to Rob Minkoff." "Yeah Rob Minkoff is perfect for this project." "Yeah Totally!" <--sarcasm
Oh if you're wondering who Rob Minkoff is that's easy, you may have seen some of his stuff, he did 'The Haunted Mansion' and oh yeah 'Stuart Little' Yeah he's great...He's epic right? Oh I forgot he did 'Stuart Little 2 ' also. anyway excuse me. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE SMOKING!!! OMG, STUPIDITY OF AMERICAN CINEMA IS GROWING EXPONENTIALLY! Like on the level where I wanna blow someone's brains out. Rob Minkoff is going to director the great action movie that we blow peoples minds on the level of 'Rumble in the Bronx', 'Once Upon a Time in China' and 'Fist of Legend', as an Asian person I am offended. Moving on.
Ok let's not get on a director too much, he produced it and people have surprised me before, let's get to the actual movie, the meat of it. Tell me if you've heard this one before--story of weak white boy getting bullied at school and has Karate Kid dreams of getting a pretty girl to notice him. Sounds like a skipping record about the coming of age right? BARF! So somehow young boy he finds a magical pole in an antique shop that magical transport him to ancient China. And it just gets worst from there and more retardely predicable--if that's even a word. So generic white boy is whisked away with Jet Li and Jackie to turn over this pole to the 'Monkey King' to save China from the Jade warlord or something.
So sparkle in attractive young love interest, and some fight sequences that is nothing new but are entertaining to people that don't know any better. And rest of the movie is seem intended for 14 year old boys.
