This review first appeared on BackStage.com

By Wayne Melton
Is there room in one picture for Jackie Chan and Jet Li? In The Forbidden Kingdom, the two famed martial arts filmmakers appear in the same movie for the first time, and they characteristically try to make the occasion memorable. Each plays a handful of characters, some heavily made-up and some au naturel by comparison, kind of like the numerous Eddie Murphy appearances in the Nutty Professor movies. All are alike in their potential to tear up a scene more mightily than several houses of flying daggers.

So much effort is expended, actually, to make the Chan-Li combo a hit — long fight sequences and equally lengthy verbal sparring abound — audiences may lose track of the main character, Jason (Michael Angarano), a teenager from our era magically transported to mythic China. There he must battle a powerful demigod (Collin Chou) to save another deity called the Monkey King (Li). Angarano must also fight to wrest screen time from Chan and Li, and that’s one battle he doesn’t always win.

One problem is that Angarano makes a meager action hero for any age group. Though Jason is written in the mold of miniadventurers from such movies as The NeverEnding Story and The Lord of the Rings — both frequently quoted in Kingdom — Angarano looks like a college dude with too much makeup on or a middle-schooler with too much chest hair. As a screen presence he’s more the type to play the hero’s sidekick, and the movie feels out of sync whenever he’s rescuing the girl or battling a villain.

Some things in Kingdom Angarano can’t help. Directed by Rob Minkoff (The Lion King) from a script by John Fusco (Young Guns), Kingdom does surprisingly little to earn interest in its characters. It’s more of a showcase than a story, a hodgepodge of Chinese myth, Asian cinema characters, and grabs from other fantasy films. Surprising, then, that Jason, a rabid kung-fu-movie fan, never notices any of the references. Brides with white hair, Shaolin monks, drunken masters — all pass without arousing much interest in the boy, despite those posters of the same he has plastered on his bedroom walls back home.

One must remember, of course, that the fans important to the filmmakers are the ones buying tickets, and Kingdom may successfully impress some of these moviegoers. With consistently over-the-top performances, broadly emotional dialogue, and lots of action, the movie is as intensely schizophrenic as any Asian action cinema that might have inspired it. Its makers may have overplayed their hand, however, by giving so much screen time (and, one suspects, leeway) to both of the genre’s larger-than-life figures. With limited room for grounding reality, what was supposed to be a volatile event ends up more juvenile than was perhaps intended.

Genre: Action-adventure

Directed by: Rob Minkoff

Written by: John Fusco

Starring: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michael Angarano, Collin Chou