The Lesson Plan

I am not a movie guy, so every time I go to the theaters has to be an event. For this round, the historic meeting of Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Does this dream ticket hold up?

I was prepared to say, “It is simply impossible for me to review this film objectively.” However, I won’t be. Instead, I was able to walk away from the film sober despite the Drunken Master himself.

Wait, I think I made the movie sound worse than it did. Hold on.

Let’s start with the what everyone wants to know — the fight between Jackie Chan and Jet Li was simply awesome! That’s a good thing for almost anyone who has seen or will be seeing this film — this is truly the film’s major selling point. The fight, thankfully, never felt like it was going to end except for when we felt it had to. These two time their moves so well that their martial arts tell a story. And is the ultimate fanboy question answered — who is better Jackie Chan or Jet Li? This is a movie of course, and in the real world Li is the real fighter while Chan is trained an acrobat. Still, both of them have fiercely loyal followings and the interesting is that when their fight is over, Li fans will say Jet Li won while Chan fans will it goes Jackie Chan. In that case, we all win.

But how about the rest of the movie?

Make no mistake, this is no Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or Hero. This is Wizards of Oz meets The Karate Kid. This is a film designed for the pop-corn summer movie audience: we have a straightforward protagonist in a straightforward quest that all in all gives us straightforward entertainment. Just don’t expect the Second Coming with this film and you’ll be fine.

The story is a loose adaptation of Journey to the West, the Chinese legend starring the Monkey King. In this version, the playful King loses the source of his power and is imprisoned by the dreaded Jade Warlord (Collin Chou, who was Seraph in The Matrix series). The artifact then falls through the cracks of space and time and into the hands of a young man from Boston, Jason (played by Michael Arangano). Jason has to get this artifact back to the Monkey King in order to free him from the Jade Warlord. In his quest he meets the drunken immortal, Lu Yan (Jackie Chan), Golden Sparrow (Lin Yi Fei) and the Silent Monk (Jet Li). The story isn’t difficult to follow at all, save for those times when Jackie Chan’s thick accent gets in the way of his narration.

(On the point of language, the film somehow makes sense of how the characters switch between English and Mandarin… in a fantasy film sort of way. Nonetheless, there are still some parts where the film would’ve been more powerful with just a Mandarin audio track and English subtitles.)

While us fans of the wuxia genre would have loved to see a purely Hong Kong or China produced film starring these two (here is my list of Top Ten Wuxia Films of All Time), this film will still be precious just for the interactions between Jackie Chan and Jet Li. We may be there for their fighting, but don’t miss out on their hilarious scenes while training their non-Chinese hero and that quick scene in the desert where Jet Li becomes even funnier than Jackie Chan. So in terms of sheer entertainment value, this film has lots.

In the end, any criticism I will have of this film is that it isn’t “Chinese enough” especially after having seen so many martial arts films throughout the years. Nonetheless, this film deserves to exist if only for the historic on-screen screening of the two. Still, I consider this a first draft, hoping that there are much better versions of this historic meet coming our way.