Film

Movie-musical fans have a soft spot for 1946’s Ziegfeld Follies, as the MGM anthology features “The Babbitt and the Bromide”—the only dance number in which Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly perform together. The sequence offers a peerless opportunity to view Astaire’s elegance versus Kelly’s athleticism. Hong Kong action-flick buffs get something comparable in The Forbidden Kingdom, which pairs Jackie Chan and Jet Li for the first time. When these two legends finally unleash their fists of fury on each other, complete with choreography by Yuen Woo-ping—the Arthur Freed and Hermes Pan of chop-socky—the result is just as eye-opening as the Astaire-Kelly hoof-off. You can see how Chan’s rhythmic, flowing fighting moves stand out next to Li’s sharp, precise strikes, and their showdown is the best reason to sit through Rob Minkoff’s cover version of a vintage kung fu epic.

Granted, for a Western approximation of a wuxia pan, the film remains remarkably faithful to the genre’s eccentricities. But the sheer delirium that fueled the original HK films is conspicuously absent, and every time the focus switches to Michael Angarano channeling his inner Ralph Macchio, The Forbidden Kingdom reminds you that it’s primarily an act of occidental tourism.