What do you do when you want to watch Wanted and your girlfriend wants to watch Mama Mia? You go to see The Forbidden Kingdom.
Remember all the buzz that surrounded Michael Mann's crime classic Heat when people realised it would feature Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro's first on screen team-up?
Well this is kind of like the Kung Fu version as, unbeliveably, The Forbidden Kingdom is the first time martial arts masters Jackie Chan and Jet Li have knocked lumps out of each other on the big screen.
And very enjoyable it is too.
The plot (such as it is) concerns Boston teen Jason (Sky High's Michael Angarano, a sort of cheap Shia LeBouef), a kung fu film fanatic, who, while trying to save an old golden staff from thieves in a chinatown DVD shop, falls off a roof and wakes up in a fantastic version of ancient China.
There he meets drunken scholar Lu Yan (Jackie Chan), who riffing on the older Chinese films in his canon, rather than his modern Hollywood duds, is at his best for years.
Lu Yan explains that the staff Jason carries belongs to the Monkey King, an immortal turned to stone by the evil Jade Warlord. It is prophesised that Jason will travel to the Mountain of Five Elements and free the Monkey King.
Joined by a girl called Golden Sparrow and the mysterious Silent Monk (Jet Li), silent no doubt to minimise the effect of his poor English, the heroes head off to teach the young American some life lessons and whupp Jade Warlord ass.
I lost count of the number of films the Forbidden Kingdom steals from during its run time from The Lord of the Rings through Never Ending Story, Indiana Jones, the old Monkey TV series, 80s Kung Fu classics, even the Wizard of Oz.
But that doesn't mean I didn't like it.
The big screen mash up between Chan and Li is well worth the wait as they trash an ancient temple while battering seven bells out of each other using all the ancient kung fu styles (Preying Mantis I choose you!) choreographed by legendary fight-man Yuen Woo-ping.
The film, at times, is quite beautiful as the location scouts and matte painters bring us bamboo forests, fights in cherry blossom fields, endless deserts and tumbling waterfalls.
The hammy and hissable Jade Warlord is a satisfying villain and his white-haired witch henchwoman adequately scary (watch out for the deadly pony tail move).
And unlike Kung Fu Panda the life lessons are delivered in an un-cheesey matter-of-fact way, learning Kung Fu actually seems hard (really hard!) and when you fight to the death people actually get killed.
In fact I was surprised by the film's willingness to kill major characters with little recourse to them magically coming back alive. More kids films should be like that (I'm looking at you Panda). It never did Bambi any harm.
It's cheap and cheerful and won't convince none kung fu fans to change their minds but I'll take that over Mama Mia any day.
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