Forbidden Kingdom -- fun and awful all at once.

[nonionay]

Yesterday I saw The Forbidden Kingdom. I'd heard the only reason to see it was: Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan. That was enough for me, so, going in with low expectations, I had fun. It's full of beautiful scenery and terrible dialogue. Amazing fight scenes and giant plot holes. It's got a dorky white boy who get made fun of for romanticizing kung fu, while the movie does more romanticizing than that boy ever could.
It's also got:
Villians in shimmery eyeshadow who fondle girls and kill the messenger.
Giggling monkey gods.
Sexy white-haired witches with whips, and revenge-obsessed love interests who speak only in the third person. (I was actually overjoyed by the way they handled her in the end)
Jackie Chan and Jet Li torturing dorky white boy in the name of kung fu training-- in tandem.
And best of all, Jet Li peeing on Jackie Chan.

I think the best way to sum it up is "campy," meaning "OMG this is awful but I love it."

Comments

[bolddeciever.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I felt about the same way, and still had a load of fun. I think if I had access to an 11-year-old I would totally take him or her to see it.

One of the best portrayals of Sun Wokong I've seen, even if they played liberties with his story a bit.

And the kid is totally going to go to jail when those punks get caught and rat him out as an accessory to armed robbery (I'm sure he left behind corroborating evidence), and his only defense "I couldn't help they were going to beat me up" (not a valid legal defense, anyways) isn't going to hold up to the fact that he's clearly a skilled kung-fu practitioner, and in fact showed it by beating them up afterwards.

[criada.livejournal.com]

>>And the kid is totally going to go to jail when those punks get caught and rat him out as an accessory to armed robbery

Exactly my thoughts! He should have stayed in kung fu land.

[agent139.livejournal.com]

that sounds awesome. i still think Jet Li's (adaptation) Fist of Legend is one of the best kung fu movies of all time.

what was up with the movie that jet li did before this one (forget the title) being billed as his "last movie ever" and all the early interviews for it with him saying he wasn't doing movies- and then a couple months later, this movie starts getting press? found that kind of odd.

[criada.livejournal.com]

Man, I need to see more kung fu movies. According to IMDB, Jet Li's doing even more--The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

[(Anonymous)]

Hello there!

I've been looking for you for a while. You're the author of one of my favorite mermaid stories that I read years ago on elfwood. It was your "Cinderella the little mermaid" story. I had actually saved it to my computer and re-read it every now and then. Your vision of the merpeople's world was fascinating, and I loved the fact that you had a character that wanted fins instead of feet, that's very desirable to me (I'm an aquaphile). Anyway, a hard-drive crash erased my huge personal collection of mermaid stories from the web over the years. I went back to elfwood looking for it, but was saddened to see that you no longer had it up there. Is there anywhere online that I'd be able to read the tale now?

If you get a chance, send me an email and we can at least chat. Have you written anything since? merzaiya at yahoo dot com. Take care!

[magycmyste]

lol, it's true, but I had too much fun watching this movie to be upset with its flaws. Also, possibly stating the obvious: I think whoever made it had a huge crush on Sindel.