The Forbidden Kingdom Critic Reviews

For martial arts action fans, The Forbidden Kingdom may be the best fantasy story since the genre was opened to a wider audience by "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."Read the full review

A faithful and disarmingly earnest attempt to honor some venerable and popular Chinese cinematic traditions.Read the full review

Unashamed about giving its audience a good time, and the high spirits go a long way toward counterbalancing the cliches.Read the full review

At best, The Forbidden Kingdom counts as an amiable time-waster for kids, but much more should be expected from the momentous union of two kung-fu titans.Read the full review

On its own terms, it's a handsome albeit unexceptional juvenile adventure shot on some magnificent Chinese locations.Read the full review

There's nothing really wrong with all this in theory, but the overall doofiness of the execution is finally too much to overcome. The filmmakers come off like their protagonist, wide-eyed tourists in an exotic realm. If you've been looking for a martial arts film to take granny and the kids to, this might be the one, but a Jackie Chan-Jet Li collaboration deserves better than that.Read the full review

Feels a bit too much like six hours of movie packed into 113 minutes - imagine if New Line had made Peter Jackson cram the entirety of "Lord of the Rings" into one film.Read the full review

Will please its core audience but won't enthrall anyone over the age of 16. (Even that might be stretching the point.)Read the full review

A movie that jumps between two worlds can be a powerful experience, as any fan of "The Wizard of Oz," "Back to the Future" or "The Terminator" can tell you. But this phoned-in epic is simply a celebration of the inauthentic.Read the full review