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saw this sunday, had a good time!
the dialogue wavered between bearable and painful, both in writing and delivery. I believe I might have enjoyed it quite a bit more in mandarin with subtitles, but maybe that's just me being a subtitle snob.
I also think I might have enjoyed the whole thing more with a chinese protagonist, rather than the american kid going through mysterious gate of no gate, presumably so the american audience has someone to relate to.
still it was a neat gimmick with the language barrier - a never-explained trick of the magical journey, kind of Tardis-like, so we get English when the kid's around and Chinese with subtitles otherwise.
as far as choreography goes, I thought the Jet/Jackie fight in the temple was an order of magnitude better than anything else - they really spent a lot of time on it but with so much detail and skill it didn't get boring. some of the other fights - like King Monkey fighting no-name soldier guys on the mountain top - were probably actually much shorter, but seemed to drag on and on with almost every move the same, and wires making the whole thing look silly.
overall, the plot was like something out of the 80s, but with much better kung fu than anything we had going on in america at the time. I wanted to be too cool to like it, but I liked it a lot. I almost went home and started swinging my copper pipe around. |
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The Forbidden Kingdom poster
The White Haired Assassin Poster
Li BingBing the Wolf Devil Woman, Ni Chang!!!