Jason, who has found a bo staff in Old Hop's shop just like the magic one in his dreams, suddenly finds himself in the kind of mystical medieval China that would have existed in old Shaw brothers movies if they'd had CGI. As happens whenever a person is transported to a fantasy land, Jason almost immediately finds himself in danger, threatened by evil soldiers who must be evil because as soon as they appear, they dispatch a few expositional victims as only evil guys do. Evilly. He's saved by raggedy pilgrim Lu Yan (Chan again, in Bob Marley dreadlocks), who tells him that the mysterious figure in his dreams is the legendary Monkey King, and that the bo staff he's carrying is a talisman that must be returned to the Monkey King so that he can be freed from a spell cast upon him by the evil Jade Warlord (Chou).

Now that we have an objective, our ersatz Frodo by way of Ralph Macchio must begin his quest and learn martial arts along the way. He and Lu Yan are joined by the lovely Golden Sparrow (Liu) and the badass Silent Monk, Lan Cai He (Li again). There are no yellow bricks, but cherry orchards and bamboo forests stand in just fine. ...

It needs a Luck Dragon. Or Flying Monkeys

The Forbidden Kingdom gets a B because it delivers what it promises: the two most popular martial-arts stars in the world, together in a movie with fights choreographed by the great Woo-ping Yuen, who has worked on movies ranging from The Snake in the Eagle's Shadow to the Matrix trilogy to both Kill Bills. The Chan and Li characters of Lu Yan and Lan Cai He are sly riffs on both stars' signature roles from the Drunken Master and Once Upon a Time in China movies. So, on another level, this is a team-up as major as one featuring Dirty Harry and James Bond. The fights and action scenes are freakin' great, and worth the cost of a ticket.

In every other respect, the movie is weak. The Forbidden Kingdom, as written by Young Guns scribe James Fusco, has no idea what it wants to be. It tries to be a kids' adventure movie; the "kid taken to a faraway land" riff of The Neverending Story and The Wizard of Oz looms over everything. But the movie features violence that doesn't match the kid-friendly feel of the rest of the flick. Not enough reason is given for Jason to undertake his quest to return the magic bo staff to the Monkey King. There's no urgency to the quest. The badness of the bad guy, the Jade Warlord, seems lacquered on. The movie needs him to be bad, so he's bad.

The badness of the "real world" bad guys, Lupo and his South Boston toughs, is so horrendously executed it's laughable. Lupo and his gang talk like they're all auditioning for the role of Anybodys in a production of West Side Story directed by Abel Ferrara. In all honesty, the gang of mouse-hungry cats in Minkoff's Stuart Little were more credible threats.

Then there's our hero, Jason. When your main character is a kid who has to share screen time with two of the most charismatic movie stars in the world (to say nothing of Chou, who played Seraph in the Matrix sequels), you had better make sure that that kid has some charisma that can stand up on its own. Jason isn't written right, cast right or acted right to compete with the monolithic talent and all-around coolness that dwarfs him. And the character, as conceived, doesn't make any sense. He's supposedly a kung-fu movie freak, but has to be told who the Monkey King is. The Monkey King is one of the most enduring figures in kung-fu cinema—playing the Monkey King was a breakthrough role for Kung Fu Hustle's Stephen Chow, for cryin' out loud. Having a kung-fu-loving kid whisked to a mystical China and not knowing who the Monkey King is is like having a comic-book geek whisked to Gotham and not knowing who Batman is.

Still, the fights, fantasy elements and star power overcome these limitations. Which says a lot for just how good those elements are.