starring:

Jackie Chan as The Drunken Immortal/Lu Yan and Hop





Jet Li as The Silent Monk/Monkey King (Sun Wu Kong)





Collin Chou as the Jade Warlord





Michael Anagrano as Jason Tripitikas





Liu Yi Fei as Golden Sparrow





Li Bing Bing as Ni Chang/White-Haired Witch






As a young boy, Jason has always been fascinated by martial arts (a.k.a kungfu) and is always watching kungfu movies that he rents from this shop in Chinatown. Hop, an old man, is the owner of the shop. One day, Jason stumbles across this golden rod in the back of the shop while browsing through the DVDS, and Hop tells him that some guy left it there a long long time ago, and the rod is still waiting for its master to come and collect it back.

That very same day, Jason gets bullied by this gang of boys, who threaten to beat him up unless he brings them to Hop's shop at night. There, Hop trustingly lets Jason into the shop, only to find 4 other gangsters robbing his shop. Jason grabs the rod and tries to fight them back, but the gangleader pulls out a gun and accidentally shoots Hop in the chest.

They try to intimidate Jason into keeping his silence and end up chasing him all the way to the rooftop of a building. Without aany choice, Jason jumps off and loses his consciousness. Waking up in a strange environment, Jason discovers that he has been transported back to a village in ancient China, and in his hands is the golden rod. Just as he is getting his bearings, the Jade Army arrives and starts raiding the village. The soldiers see the golden rod in Jason's hands and try to capture him, but Jason runs into Lu Yan and is saved by him.

They meet Golden Sparrow while taking refuge at an inn- where Lu Yan tells Jason about the prophecy of a Seeker coming to return the Golden Rod to the Monkey King- and they escape together when the Jade Army catches up upon them. Along the journey to find the Monkey King, the golden rod is snatched away by a monk (Jet Li), who does not have a name because it is not mentioned in the movie. After an interesting duel between Lu Yan and the monk, the latter joins them all on their mission

Receiving news of the reappearance of the Golden Rod after so many years, the Jade Warlord sends the White-Haired Witch to capture the Seeker and the rod, promising a reward of the much lusted after elixir, which grants mortals immortality, and help immortals preserve their immortality. There are few battle scenes and the monk and Lu Yan become Jason's masters, teaching him kungfu so that he stands a chance against the Jade Warlord. They also learn of Sparrow's background and the reason why she hates the Jade Warlord so much- he was the one who killed her entire family.







Along the way, Lu Yan gets injured by an arrow shot by the White-Haired Witch and suddenly there is another objective of the mission-to retrieve the Elixir of Immortality to save Lu Yan's life.

The real excitement starts when they reach the Jade Warlord's palace. Of course, from this point onwards, if you want to find out what happens, you're gonna have to watch it in the cinemas.

My opinions:

What I found a turn-off was the fact that it was an English film. I mean, its already quite unrealistic to have an ang-moh as the Seeker (imagine Tripitikas/Tang San Zang with golden hair) but to have the Jade Emperor and Monkey King speaking English too? Sun Wu Kong squeaking "DIE YOU MINIONS!!!" sounds just too weird. Not that he did say that, of course.

Good thing though, all the actors had pretty good English, except for Jet Li. I couldn't help cringing a little each time he spoke. Surprisingly, Liu Yi Fei (my favourite-she's so pretty!!!) speaks VERY well, whereas Li Bing Bing sounded like she was concentrating more on pronouncing her words than on her actions. Michael Anagrano is Caucasian and we've all heard Jackie Chan speak English countless of times, so I don't have much to comment on their English.

On a whole though, the movie is super hilarious and its good if you're looking for something light and entertaining, because although there's a lot of fighting, it isn't very tense or gruesome, like in The Three Kingdoms. Too bad the budding romance between Jason and Sparrow didn't get anywhere, which was probably just as well, because at times it seemed like they were older sister and younger brother instead. Double cringe.

Just before I give my final rating, I must say that Liu Yi Fei has the potential to make it into Hollywood- the next Lucy Liu? She acts and speaks really well, and she IS pretty. Much better than some of the Asian actresses in Hollywood for example *ahem* Gong Li *ahem*.

Overall rating:

Definitely worth the money.