CINEMA: The Forbidden Kingdom

You can wait all year for a great, feelgood movie to hit the big screen and then suddenly two turn up in the same week. Although The Forbidden Kingdom isn’t as brash as Mamma Mia!, it knocks spots off other family-orientated films like Narnia with spectacular scenery, stunning special effects, lots of humour and a really intelligent, well thought through screenplay that doesn’t patronise younger viewers.

Bullied student Jason (Michael Angarano) finds solace in the B-movie kung fu DVDs he finds in his local Chinatown pawnshop. One evening, when he is confronted by his tormentors, he finds something in the shop that sends him back in time to ancient China. Here he discovers he must become a great kung fu warrior in order to release the fabled Monkey King who has been imprisoned by the evil Jade warlord. Jason doesn’t know the first thing about fighting but he quickly learns with the help of the drunken kung fu master Lu Yan (Jackie Chan) and the taciturn Silent Monk (Jet Li).

What follows are some of the most exhilarating fight sequences seen on film since Crouching Tiger which, with the help of some fantastic special effects, really do seem magical. This is the first time Chan and Li have appeared in a film together, but let’s hope it’s not the last because their chemistry is great and they inject a lot of humour into proceedings. Meanwhile, the Chinese locations – from a vast arid desert to a bamboo forest – give the film an exotic and otherworldly feel.

The Forbidden Kingdom has superb production values and a deeply moral story, but screenwriter John Fusco, who also wrote Young Guns, has a lovely lightness of touch and the film never takes itself too seriously, making it great entertainment all round.   Dee Pilgrim