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Fist Opportunity

For the "historic" first celluloid meeting of martial arts legends Jet Li and Jackie Chan, you could do worse than "The Forbidden Kingdom", a lazy amalgam of kung fu mysticism and Hollywood franchise pairings. But what could have been the stuff of legend ends up little more than a goofy buddy comedy with some high-flying king fu butt-kicking.

Like other recent combo platters ("Freddy vs Jason", "Alien vs Predator", the much-delayed "Batman vs Superman"), "Kingdom" suffers due to its insistent inability to cast one of its stars as the lesser master. Both characters must be revered and therefore any conflict must come from external (and typically less interesting) forces. In the case of "Kingdom", those forces are wielded by the Jade War Lord (Collin Chou).

In China, 500 years ago, it seems the JWL managed to imprison the legendary Monkey King (one of Jet Li's two roles here) by entombing the apparently immortal warrior in a stone statue worthy of Han Solo carbonite casing. Before his imprisonment, the Monkey King managed to jettison his magic staff out the castle window. It winds up, stay with me here, in a Chinatown pawnshop run by Old Hop (Jackie Chan, also taking on dual roles). When young, impetuous kung-fu fanatic Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano) takes hold of the staff, he is somehow transported to China where he must defeat the Jade War Lord and free the Monkey King - though it's never entirely clear why that's a good idea. In China, Jason pairs up with Lu Yan (Mr. Chan) and the Silent Monk (Mr. Li) who decide, after a stunning fight sequence (the only one pitting the two superstars against each other), to enlighten Jason in the ways of kung fu so he may fulfill his (you guessed it) destiny.

If any or all of this sounds confusing, it's really not. If it sounds familiar, however, it really should. Not only is the script, by John Fusco ("Young Guns"), based on the real Monkey King legend, but Jason's character is a direct descendant of "The Karate Kid" (his transportation to the Kingdom is shades of "The Wizard of Oz") and the Jade War Lord could have come from any "Mortal Combat" game. As played by Mr. Angarano, Jason is a typically clueless "Westerner" (happily for him, everyone in China speaks English, except when they need to sound menacing). His brief flirtation with the dart-wielding beauty Golden Sparrow (Liu Yifei) barely registers.

But "Kingdom" isn't about Jason, it's about seeing Mr. Li and Mr. Chan in action. The film plays things fairly tongue-in-cheek, with both actors inadvertently competing to out-mispronounce each other. Thankfully, director Rob Minkoff ("Stuart Little") chose legendary choreographer Yuen Wo Ping to orchestrate the film's action. The result is some typically beautiful "wire work". But aside from the one fight sequence between the stars, the rest of the film is fairly rote stuff. This "Kingdom" may be forbidden, but it's also fairly forgettable.