The Forbidden Kingdom

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.