The Sci Fi Catholic Yak Module
Fr Z also has a review of this flick on his blog...
http://www.wdtprs.com/blog/
Kung Fu Theatre lovers unite!!
I'd have wished the story was less forced and more mythic. But I still had a lot of fun. And of course, I found the slapstick really funny :-D Now I have to go practice killing with my hairclips.
Makes you wonder what Tolkien might have done if the had the Hobbits or the Ents do martial arts....
The only western religious symbol that appears in the movie is a cross. It belongs to the leader of the band that viciously attacks the hero in modern times.
It causes the same offense as if any other western religious symbol would have been chosen
Okay: off-putting parts of your review - "somebody geeky from our world gets sucked through a portal into another world where he stops being geeky, fulfills some prophecy, and defeats a supervillain, after which he returns to our world and applies the valuable life lessons he has learned".
Groan.
Really gotta see this! parts of your review: "the prophesied Seeker (yeah, "Seeker") destined to return a magic staff to the Monkey King"
The Monkey King? Great Sage, Equal of Heaven? Disciple Aware of Vacuity? *and* The Magic Wishing Staff?
Woo-hoo!
(Okay, so I kinda maybe have a thing for the Monkey King. And Hanuman. But it's not like I've got a primate fetish or anything...)
(I can always hope for the Director's Cut in which Nerdy Modern-Day Comic Relief falls into active volcano or gets eaten by - darn it, Eastern dragons are good guys. Okay, whatever Oriental beastie is the equivalent of an evil Western dragon, mmkay?) 
I should point out that, in that last reference to "evil Western dragons", of course I was not referring to Snuffles.
Nor did I intend a slur upon Western dragons as a whole; if you prefer, we can always refer to wyrms or cold drakes or some other species.
Thanks for the review!!
The use of the Jade Emperor and the Monkey King and the peaches of immortality are more about name-dropping than any thoughtful use of Chinese mythology. The story outline is basic sword-and-sorcery stuff with China references. That doesn't bug me: I'm only here for the Kung Fu, but I suppose some Chinese mythology buffs will be disappointed, and for reasons I can understand.
Oh.
Ah, well.
Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Good enough for me!
I read a few other reviews of this movie & ran across the opinion on msnbc (sorry for the sloppy citation) that very stylish movies like this were the future of the kung-fu genre because they needed to appeal to women. If D.G. won't whack me for starting another thread here, what about that? What makes kung-fu or other combat flicks appealing to women? I have my own half-baked theory (below), but I'm curious to hear from others.
So, my half-baked theory about it is that it isn't about violence directly but competence. A man who knows what to do with a sword, whether it's in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" or "Conan the Barbarian" displays a competence born of long practice & discipline, and that's really appealing to many women.(okay, I DO think that applies to really skilled chefs, too.) And I think women who are themselves skilled, trained, well-educated, etc. are even more likely to value this in a man, even if he's an alien in some way (barbarian, ancient Asian monk, whatever). Competence is really attractive, even if it isn't directly sexually appealing. I think kung-fu vividly demonstrates this kind of competence, 'though I personally prefer swords, probably because I fenced in high school.
I'm not sure if this supports or contradicts D.G.'s geek theory in this movie. But I think "The Matrix" really hit a vein with the computer nerd instantly learning kung-fu and never being shown at a terminal again. Being a great hacker isn't a matter of mental discipline & mastery on anything like the level of kicking butt with Lawrence Fishbourne, apart from the dynamic of which is more visually pleasing.
Hmmm - it depends what they mean by "appeal to women". If that's going to entail sloshing in the romance by the bucketful, then leave it out as far as I'm concerned (yes, star-crossed lovers, doomed love, and so on is a great plot device, but if the ratio of hero moping over heroine is going to be ramped up at the expense of hero swashing his buckle, it wouldn't appeal to me).
You may have something there about the competence angle. The first kung-fu movie I ever saw, wayyy back in my early teens, was (of course!) Bruce Lee in "Enter the Dragon". I thought it was at once the bloodiest and the most graceful thing I'd ever seen, almost like dancing, almost stylised like ballet.
Interesting idea. I do think this movie was aimed at young men. Whether or not it's appealing to women as well, I don't know. I'm not a woman, and Lucky doesn't like Kung Fu movies, so I don't have any real basis here to judge whether or not a movie like this appeals to women. I can say a few things tangentially related to the subject, however.
Many, many years ago, I read (I cannot give the original source) that there is evidence that women find action movies sexier, if that's the correct term, whereas men find chick flicks sexier. Having neither source nor data, I'll leave that there, but I'm inclined to believe it even though I'm not particularly inclined to watch chick flicks, especially modern Hollywood ones. (Blech! I'd be embarrassed if I had young children who saw some of those previews that are supposedly appropriate for all audiences.)
Snuffles the Dragon felt a bit left out of the review of this film because he wanted to compare it to one of his favorite manga, Fushigi Yugi, to which it bears superficial resemblance, as Fushigi Yugi is an escapist action-oriented fantasy set in a magical ancient China, though it is decidedly aimed at teenage girls rather than teenage boys. Snuffles informs me that the creator, Yu Watase, mentions in one of the journal entries in the comic's margins that she has received letters from male fans who say they like the comic but are embarrassed to admit it or to be seen with it. Having glanced at the volumes of this title on Snuffles's shelf, I can certainly see why. ...And I'm not really sure where I was going with that, except to note that some things aimed at women can appeal to men as well, and presumably vice versa.
What Snuffles was trying to get at, and which he says I didn't convey well, is that Fushigi Yugi has the exact same premise, but the target audience is female--it's about a modern girl who gets sucked into a fantasy ancient China where she has to save the universe. Snuffles says he hasn't read the whole series, but so far an interesting difference from The Forbidden Kingdom is that, instead of learning Kung Fu and fighting herself, she surrounds herself with hunky men who fight for her. Make of that what you will.
Incidentally, some time back, I made myself infamous on the Blog Tour with a scathing review of The Restorer by Sharon Hinck. Had I to do it over, I would tone down the sarcasm, but still scathe the novel. Anyway, the protagonist is a Christian housewife who gets sucked into an alternate universe where she has to save. Target audience is clearly Christian housewives.
Anytime you have this conceit of a protagonist from our world being sucked into another world, look at the protagonist: chances are good that's the target audience.
Protagonist as target audience--I dunno. Maybe for some writers/film writers, and I'm not familiar with manga. I think that could more or less apply to "Lord of the Rings", for example, if we accept the premise that the Hobbits were generally supposed to be Englishmen in WWII. But I can think of some sterling examples that don't fit: Thomas Covenant in the Chronicles of T.C., Severian in Shadow, the professor in That Hideous Strength, all the protagonists in Canticle for Leibowitz. Maybe Odd Thomas? I think the really top-notch storytellers can make a really compelling protagonist who's not much at all like the reader.
hhmmm. I notice that all my examples are male. After racking my brain, I came up with Sigourney Weaver in Alien (I want my own flame thrower), Commander Ivanova from Babylon 5, and Lelu from The Fifth Element. Xena, of course. Identify with them, even via vicarious desires? I'm not sure. My husband would say I identify with the ferocious personality type here, rather than the gender.
I notice that D.G.'s pointer really applies to a lot of mysteries--almost all current mysteries seem to have a protag who's white, female, college-educated, liberal, agnostic, really into shoes, and utterly boring.
I think the really top-notch storytellers can make a really compelling protagonist who's not much at all like the reader.
After I posted, I started thinking of exceptions. I really meant this conceit specifically, that the protagonist is someone from our world who gets zapped into another, but I can think of exceptions for that, too.
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