Remember that Chuck Norris flick, in which a young white kid dreams of kicking butt next to his martial arts hero? “The Forbidden Kingdom” is just like that except this kid’s heroes are ancient teachers from a different time. The Norris flick I was referring to was “Sidekicks (1992)” and it amazed me how similar these two films were. In this film, the young white boy collected old movie posters and the DVDs of his favorite kung fu films, so the film has this self-referential mentality. The opening credits displayed a clever use of the old movie posters from films of Bruce Lee and Gordon Liu and when the movie ended, how did I wish “Forbidden Kingdom” had some of that old Shaw Brothers flavor.

We begin with that for mentioned young white boy (there’s a reason I’m calling him out on his race, so just wait) who has an old man friend in Chinatown where he gets his bootlegged DVDs from and on his way home some bullies beat him up and force him to help rob that old man he gets his movies from. From a simple robbery to murder, the old man is shot and passes this stick-like weapon to the white boy, telling him to take it to the rightful person it belongs to. From there he is transported to a different time, out of place, and he must find this person the staff belongs to. Sound simple? It is. How do you think it’ll play out? If you said well, he starts off on his journey and gets into trouble early only to have a kung fu master save him, then he decides to help him on his mission, only to have the white boy ask the kung fu master to help teach him the martial arts, I’d say you’re off to a good start. Then, reluctantly, the kung fu master starts his training, all the while the evil warlord steals the staff, there’s a climatic kung fu battle, in which the student must help his defeated teacher, saves the day, wins a trip back home and now uses his kung fu skills to beat the crap out of the bullies…whoa, wait a sec! You’re giving away the movie! Or you, like me, could guess the story, the twists, the ending, and a mile away.

It’s a bit of a shame, that the long waited on screen pairing of Jet Li and Jackie Chan is surrounded by such a clichéd, standard kung fu fantasy drivel. I like my martial arts films too but I could’ve come up with a much better story to pair these Chinese legends in. The film is clearly an attempt at a loving homage to the wild, fantasy films from the Shaw Brothers, and despite such bland plotting, some of it is fun. It’s a clean, family martial arts film. There’s little blood, no cussing, and the clean cut, white boy is clearly a marketable character. That’s the shame. Why must it be a white boy who saves the Chinese people from the evil warlord? Typical Western ideals. It might not get noticed to the most of its core audience, but I caught on. Did Gordon Liu need a white boy to help him defeat a master in “36th Chamber of Shaolin”? Hell no. Did Bruce Lee need a white boy in the “Chinese Connection”? Nope. I think the film would have been better if it was made in Li’s and Chan’s native country.

But enough of that critical thinking, what about the fight scenes, that’s what Li versus Chan is all about. I know, and seriously, they do fight in an extended sequence, so you won’t get cheated like a recent Li versus Jason Stratham in “War” was to us all. The fight scenes are plenty and furious, all choreographed by the immortal Woo-ping Yuen, who has implemented his fighting techniques in everything from “Kill Bill” to the “Matrix” to “Once Upon a Time in China”. It’s that crazy ‘wire-fu’ we’re all use to and while the fight scenes are good, they’re not as original or fresh as the were in “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”, but hey, you come up with different fighting styles since the early seventies for all of these films.

Getting back the white boy thing, these American producers think in Western ideals, that Americans want to see a western in these oriental locations. Looking at my DVD collection, as a white male westerner, I own plenty of Chinese flicks that are all in Mandarin and feature no white boys. It’s a tad stereotypical and slightly offensive. The film is safe and predictable and while Li and Chan have been in better, the whole gimmick is to see them fight each other-finally-and for that it’s mildly entertaining. We’re all fascinated with martial arts films and that culture, but not the American version of those films and a Western view of the culture like “Forbidden Kingdom” is.