The Forbidden Kingdom

My first post!. EVER!. (Thanks to King Shen and Aprilsky)

Ok let's see, honestly, me and a few friends decided to watch a late showing of a movie, and it was either this or Pucong 3! Haha... Don't even ask me what that's about! I was a bit skeptical, seeing as i don't really consider myself a fan of "Chinese Epics", cos honestly, i see "JET LI" and i immediately think, kung-fu, subtitles, period costumes, but maybe i should've paid more attention to "JACKIE CHAN". Apart from the two Js, it also starred the kid from Sky High, Michael Angarano, and cos i've been watching Will & Grace on DVDs, i know that he also played Jack's son in the show. Haha. One of the definite highlights of the movie were the 2 female leads, Sparrow played by Yifei Liu, is awesome, i was literally saying "she's so hot" everytime she appeared on screen, and for those who like their girls a bit "dirtier", the witch played by Bingbing Li, was also quite nice to look at.

Yifei Liu, "Hot"

Bingbing Li, "Dirty"

Movie starts off with the Monkey King fighting, and then Michael Angarano's character wakes up, and goes n visits his local chinese pawn shop/dvd supplier, and somehow, he ends up in this different world, i suppose you could probably classify this movie as a fantasy flick, cos of the shift from earth to the "Forbidden Kingdom". Basically, Michael Angarano's character is on a mission to return this "magic staff" to free the Monkey King who was turned into stone by the Jade Warlord played by Colin Chou, who also played Seraph in The Matrix (shout out to Aprlisky! Haha). On this mission he bumps into Jet Li and Jackie Chan's characters and ends up being trained and changes from a loser to a loser who now knows kung-fu. Hahaha...

I was quite surprised with this movie, i suppose going in thinking it was an epic had something to do with that. But i like the whole Monkey King story, i liked that it was actually in english, because if i had to read substitles at midnight after a long day, i would probably have fallen asleep, i liked that it really was quite a funny movie, Jackie Chan and Michael Angarano played off each other quite well, I really thought that the fighting scenes especially the ones at the beginning of the movie of the Monkey King fighting above the clouds were pretty cool. I did think that Michael Angarano was a bit weedy to pull of kung-fu moves but he surprised me, and i did end up giving the guy credit for being able to pull of some decent moves. For those of you, who know more about Jackie Chan's Drunken Master, personally i don't know that much about those movies, (my first exposure to Drunken Master was Lei in Tekken!), i don't know how the Drunken Master character in this movie fits in with the other Drunken Master movies, but in any case, seeing Jet Li and Jackie Chan sparring is always gonna be good fun.

However, i did doze off during one scene which had too much talking and no action, but thankfully it was just one scene, apart from that, i still had to strain my ears and really listen everytime Jet Li spoke, cos i still have difficulty understanding the dude! Overall, i'd say go and watch the movie if you love any of the stars, or if you're looking for something fun to watch, maybe with the family.

Stars: 2.5-3/5 (mind you Aprilsky will say that i'm too generous with my stars and that i'm easily pleased, but what can i say?... i do like to switch off and just enjoy what's on the big screen)