Monday, August 18, 2008

The Forbidden Kingdom

We've just watched The Forbidden Kingdom, and it is one of the most awful films I've ever had to sit through. You wait two decades for a film with Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and when it finally materialise, what you get is a typical Hollywood'ed movie ruined by awful acting, ridiculous casting, predictable cliché plot and pathetic villains. In fact the cast of mismatch characters are so awful that by the end of the film I wished two of them were killed off through beheading. Gist of the story is a geeky kid gets transported into Ancient China where relevant people speaks in broken English with an American accent, then has to save the world.

The dialogues are apparently written by a ten year old, and is almost too painful to watch that several times I made excuses to raid the fridge for another pint just to numb the pain. Sorry martial art and wuxia film fans - if you are expecting Drunken Master or great fighting choreography you won't be getting it here. Instead what you get here is a shoddy interpretation and desire to have Karate Kid, Journey to the West, Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, Last Action Hero and Rush Hour mashed then glued together. A bloody mess of a film, one that richly deserves to be flogged and categorised in the same breath as Battlefield Earth. Even the fight scenes were woefully disappointing with CGI thrown in and a villain who rather use Harry Potter magic than fists...

Only for people who thought that both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and House of Flying Daggers were masterpieces...

1/10

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2008 is slowly turning out to be a year of film disappointment. So far...

10,000 B.C. was equally as ridiculous. It tried too much to be a prehistoric film then attempted to emulate Stargate mid way through and failed badly. Roland Emmerich's Godzilla can be considered an Oscar worthy masterpiece compared to this mess.

Speed Racer is another huge disappointment. The effects, in my opinion, seems to have gone backwards since The Matrix almost a decade ago. You can almost feel the eight year old in me cringe as he saw his once beloved franchise plundered.

Also can we have another reboot of the Batman series again with Tim Burton back at helm? A dead actor does not suddenly make an average movie great.

About the only films released this year I've enjoyed are Mamma Mia, the fourth Indiana Jones, and maybe Cloverfield.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"the forbiddeb kingdom" is really bad. It was a dissappointing and dreadful show to watch but "cloverfield" was the worst for me:P

Jon Choo said...

Cloverfield was at least entertaining (it got silly near the end). :)