Iron Man (Opening Friday, May 2)

Rating: 9 out of 10
Cast:
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
Terrence Howard as Jim Rhodes
Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane
Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
Leslie Bibb as Christine Everhart
Shaun Toub as Yinsen
Faran Tahir as Raza
Sayed Badreya as Abu Bakaar
Bill Smitrovich as General Gabriel
Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson
Tim Guinee as Major Allen

Summary:
Iron Man stands out as one of the best comic book movies ever made thanks in large part to a healthy dose of humor, action, and a great performance by Robert Downey Jr.

Story:
Tony Stark has it all. He's a brilliant inventor. He's charming. He's insanely rich. He constantly has beautiful women at his side. Stark doesn't have a care in the world. And he certainly couldn't care less about how weapons manufactured by his company are being used. But that all changes when he's captured by terrorists in Afghanistan.

Mortally wounded, he's saved by Yensen, a fellow prisoner who happens to be a doctor. Yensen shows him how his weapons have been used for death and destruction. He also helps Stark come to realize how there are more important things in life than fame and fortune. Stark is forced to build a missile for the terrorists, but he secretly turns the tables on them and creates the first Iron Man armor instead.

Once Stark is free, he must face a new war at home... within his own company. Can Stark reverse the long history of death and destruction that he's been responsible for?

"Iron Man" is rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content.

What Worked:
I am a long time "Iron Man" fan. In fact, "Iron Man" is one of the first comics I truly started collecting back in the '80s. I came on board around the time Iron Monger debuted, actually. So it was an incredible treat to see the comic finally brought to the big screen. It was an even bigger treat to see it done so practically flawlessly. I would say this film is on par with the first "Spider-Man" movie.

A large part of the success of "Iron Man" is due to the performance of Robert Downey Jr. He perfectly captures the cocky playboy attitude of Tony before being captured. He's sexist, egotistical, and inconsiderate, yet equally charming, funny, and likable. Very few actors could pull that off, yet Downey does it. He's equally convincing when Stark has his moral compass shifted and decides to become a superhero. Downey injects a ton of humor into his performance and it's never over the top. This is especially apparent in scenes where he's testing the Mark II armor components. He also has great chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts. The two have a professional relationship that's walking the fine line of being a romantic one. The constant flirting mixed with mutual respect makes this a bit more satisfying than the tortured romance between Mary Jane and Peter Parker. They are both supported by an excellent cast. Jeff Bridges seems to have a blast being evil as Obadiah Stane. Terrence Howard could have easily been a stuffy military stereotype as Jim Rhodes, but we briefly get to see him lighten up here and there and make his character more three-dimensional. You have to give credit to Jon Favreau for letting all the supporting cast members have moments to shine. Everyone from the hot reporter in the trailers to a SHIELD agent have memorable scenes. Favreau even manages to give a robotic arm some personality that would make WALL•E jealous.

That's the other key to "Iron Man's" success – the humor. There are frequent laughs in the movie but never so many as to turn it into comedy. And it's not just Downey's one-liners that contribute to this. For example, the opening scenes showing Stark's gleefully decadent playboy lifestyle offer up lots of laughs. How can you not get a kick out of a prim and proper corporate jet that turns into a bachelor's fantasy mid-flight? Or the seemingly constantly available bar that travels with Tony? These little touches really make the movie an enjoyable experience.

Another thing that makes "Iron Man" such a success is the action. The live action suits, beautifully created by Stan Winston Studios, are perfectly merged with the CGI from ILM. With the Mark I armor we're treated to an intense battle in a cave with the terrorists. The practical suit of armor is as clunky, and lethal, as you'd expect. Later we see the Mark II armor in test flight. But it's the Mark III red and gold armor that's most impressive. When it finally goes into battle, the fanboy in you will leap for joy. We see Tony battling gunmen, tanks, jet fighters, and finally Iron Monger. It all leaves you wanting to see much more.

I think the final key factor of success with "Iron Man" is that it will please comic book fans while still being accessible to people who have never read the book. There are so many touches here and there that comic geeks, such as myself, appreciate. There are hints of War Machine, SHIELD, and more. The story remains remarkably faithful to the source material while just tweaking things enough to make it more modern. The origin story is almost identical to the comics but it's set in Afghanistan rather than Vietnam. Obadiah Stane is now an employee of Stark Industries rather than a rival weapons manufacturer, but his character is still very much the same. The list goes on an on. I can't tell you how happy I am to see the old Tony Stark again. I hate the new 'jerk' Iron Man that Marvel has been pushing on us since Civil War. Old school rules.

What Didn't Work:
I have very minor gripes with this movie. I have to really stretch to find anything that didn't work.

I would note that the music (other than "Back in Black" and "Iron Man") did not stand out in the film. There's no recognizable Iron Man theme like there was for Superman or Batman. In fact, there were many points in the film where the music sounded like it came from a TV show rather than a major summer blockbuster. There's room for improvement here in a sequel.

I would also warn people that the trailers and TV commercials spoil many of the best parts of this movie. I watched the SDCC footage, the online clips, the trailers, and commercials. If you've seen all that, there's very little left new for you. But I can't fault the marketing department too much for this. They had to sell a comic book movie to people that had never heard of Iron Man before. If that's what it takes to make this a hit and get a sequel made, I can live with it.

Finally, my 6-year-old has been waiting a year to see this movie, so I took him to it without screening it first like I usually do. (He's such a big fan that he said, "The kids at my school say I can't talk about Iron Man anymore." Yes, he's hard-core.) There were a few scenes where I covered his eyes (Stark romping with the hot reporter) and a bunch of scenes where he covered his eyes on his own (Stark being captured by the terrorists, people being hurt by Stane). In the end he loved it, but parents should pay heed to the PG-13 warning. There's nothing in here worse than what you see on primetime television, but I'd say 8 or 9-year-olds would have no problem with this film.

The Bottom Line:
"Iron Man" is everything you'd hope a comic book movie would be. It's a great start to a new franchise and a fantastic start for Marvel Studios. "Iron Man" is a great way to kick off your summer movie-going experience.

Made of Honor (Opening Friday, May 2)

Rating: 4 out of 10
Cast:
Patrick Dempsey as Tom
Michelle Monaghan as Hannah
Kevin McKidd as Colin McMurray
Kadeem Hardison as Felix
Chris Messina as Dennis
Richmond Arquette as Gary
Busy Philipps as Melissa
Whitney Cummings as Stephanie
Emily Nelson as Hilary
Kathleen Quinlan as Joan
Selma Stern as Grandma Pearl
Sydney Pollack as Thomas Sr.
James Sikking as Reverend Foote
Kevin Sussman as Tiny Shorts Guy

Review:
Tom (Patrick Dempsey) is your typical romantic comedy bachelor - a womanizer with means and charm but not much depth, or any desire to achieve any. He balances his flaws, which he's just self-aware enough to admit he has, with his friendship to Hanna, a vivacious art historian who's smart enough not to fall for Tom. When Hannah leaves for a business trip to Scotland, Tom finally notices how empty his life is without her...

...and I'm not going to bother finishing the rest of that synopsis because if you've seen even one other romantic comedy in your life then you can probably fill in the blanks just as well as I can. Suffice it to say, exactly what you think happens, happens. There is nothing, nothing, nothing original about "Made of Honor."

Which doesn't necessarily have to be the kiss of death for a film, but it doesn't help. An extremely charismatic actor or particularly sharp jokes can help a lot, even if the setup is trite and predictable, but "Made of Honor" doesn't have that either. To be fair, any decently sized film is going to have a number of hands in the pot from the studio executives on down, and that normally isn't good for much except steering a film towards extreme middle-of-the-roadness. On the other hand, it was made by the creators of "City Slickers II" and "Surviving Christmas," so that may be giving it a greater benefit of the doubt than it deserves.

Tom is the kind of smart, charming, likeable ladies man Dempsey has been playing pretty much his entire career. Given that, it's strange just how unlikeable Tom is, though that's not really his fault, he's making the best of what he's been given, an extremely self-obsessed man who's gotten a great deal without much effort, and so doesn't really appreciate anything. It's actually a bit of a mystery why Hannah, or anyone really, would be at all interested in him, once they realize how shallow he is.

No one else gets much better. Monaghan and McKidd get stuck with the typical romantic comedy supporting player assignment of being almost unbelievably oblivious to what's going on around them. Their character reactions, it seems, aren't really supposed to matter, they're just there to set up and pay off the jokes, which unfortunately aren't particularly funny.

"Made of Honor's" sense of humor is probably the film's weakest, and strangest point. It bounces off the walls in several opposite directions, sometimes in rather straightforward gentle romantic comedy bits, and sometimes in extremely puerile gags. It boggles the mind who the filmmakers were actually making the film for. Because the main character is a man the filmmakers seem to think the best way to go with him is low-brow, guy-oriented humor, but because he's not in the kind of movie that really supports that kind of thing, it has to repeatedly switch track, and the sudden changes in tone are more than a little off-putting.

The idea seems to be to build up Tom as a man's man, in order to get more mileage out of the overdone gender confusion gags once he becomes Hannah's maid of honor, but it doesn't work particularly well. Tom and all his guy friends being forced to prepare Hannah's bridal shower is kind of chuckle-worthy, but the joke is quickly driven into the ground.

It's not funny, and it's a little schizophrenic. In trying to make "Made of Honor" appeal to as many people as possible, the filmmakers have ended up with a film that doesn't really appeal to anyone.

Redbelt (Opening Friday, May 2)

Rating: 6 out of 10
Cast:
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mike Terry
Emily Mortimer as Laura Black
Alice Braga as Sondra Terry
Tim Allen as Chet Frank
Joe Mantegna as Jerry Weiss
Ricky Jay as Marty Brown
Max Martini as Joe Ryan
Allison Karman as Lawyer
Rodrigo Santoro as Bruno Silva
David Paymer as Richie
Rebecca Pidgeon as Zena Frank
Jose Pablo Cantillo as Snowflake
Caroline de Souza Correa as Monica
Randy Couture as Dylan Flynn
Dan Inosanto as Joao Moro
Ray 'Boom Boom' Mancini as George
Enson Inoue as Taketa Morisaki
Renato Magno as Romero
John Machado as Augusto Silva
Bob Jennings as Sammy
Cathy Cahlin Ryan as Gini Collins
Jean Jacques Machado as Himself

Directed by David Mamet

Summary:
Chiwetel Ejiofor's impeccable performance is the best thing going for Mamet's look at the world of ultimate fighting, a film that only excels when it treads on familiar Mamet territory but ultimately suffers from the ridiculous amount of characters and a convoluted plot.

Story:
Former soldier Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor) has found peace as a black belt Jiu-Jitsu trainer as he tries to keep his school afloat. His unwillingness to sell out and fight professionally doesn't go over well with his wife (Alice Braga), who's unhappy about their lifestyle. When one of Mike's students gets into trouble with a pretty lawyer (Emily Mortimer), it starts Mike down a path that gets him involved with actor Chet Frank (Tim Allen) and a shady fight promoter (Ricky Jay) that might force him to fight professionally in order to get out of trouble.

Analysis:
The thought of David Mamet setting a film within the world of martial arts and ultimate fighting is intriguing and daunting at the same time. After the horrendous "Never Back Down," the thought of a fight movie by arguably one of America's finest writers is something that could help make older cynics take the sport more seriously, and "Redbelt" isn't a typical sports or fight movie as much as it is an attempt by Mamet to create a modern noir film within that environment. Whether or not this idea works, it's a marked improvement over "Spartan" in terms of the writing and casting.

We've only just been introduced to Chiwetel Ejiofor's Mike Terry, a former military man who uses personal philosophies while teaching Jiu-Jitsu at his school, when he gets caught up in a number of precarious situations, including an accidental shooting at his dojo involving a policeman student and a lawyer (Emily Mortimer) and a bar fight started by a washed-up actor. Before this, he'd already been having trouble to make ends meet despite his Brazilian wife (Alice Braga) wanting him to get help from her brothers, both of whom fight professionally. These various subplots will eventually come together but until then, it's an odd mix of plotlines with disparate characters that seem to have no real connection except for Mike. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that Mike is setting himself up to get screwed with the way he naively enters many of the situations.

Mike Terry is a great role for Ejiofor as he carries the movie with a confident and convincing performance that works in whatever situation Mike enters, whether it's a business meeting or a bar fight or training his students. He's clearly a well-developed character with lots of backstory that comes out over the course of the movie. Unfortunately, neither of his female co-stars have particularly interesting or as developed roles to show their strengths as actors. Essentially, Braga plays Mike's bitchy money-hungry wife ready to sell him out at the drop of a hat, while Mortimer's lawyer is somewhat more of an enigma, filled with quirks and erratic behavior who only seems included to add sexual tension, which is never followed through with, and being there to represent Mike when he runs into trouble with the shifty characters.

As with Mamet's previous films, the casting is just as key for the satellite characters that weave in and out of Mike's character arc, and Mamet has brought back his regular ensemble to maintain a certain sense of familiarity. Ricky Jay has a plum role as the sleazy and racist fight promoter who pushes Mike to re-enter the ring, Joe Mantegna is equally strong as Chet Frank's manager while Mamet's wife Rebecca Pidgeon has an insignificant role as his wife. (Like with "Spartan," Mamet cuts far too many corners when it comes to his female characters.) Mamet should get suitable credit for maintaining accuracy within the martial arts setting by bringing in real fighters from that world, and even boxer Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini briefly shows up as Mike's former military colleague, now working on a movie set.

As always, the film is driven by Mamet's trademark rapid-fire dialogue, and while Ejiofor, Mantegna and Tim Allen easily slip into those distinct speech patterns, Brazilian actors Braga and Rodrigo Santoro and the non-actors struggle with the delivery, making their scenes feel awkward. There are plenty of scenes that work, but there are just as many others that feel shoe-horned and unnecessary to the overall story.

Sadly, it seems like Mamet has followed Woody Allen to a place where he tries to fit far too many ideas into what eventually becomes an overly-complicated and convoluted story, and as the movie gets bogged down by its abundance of characters, Mamet is left to dig himself out of the hole. Surely, there must have been an easier way to get Mike back into the ring then for him to get involved with so many different people not in his normal circle. By the time the film finally gets to the big climactic tournament, the main story hasn't gone anywhere that wasn't telegraphed from very early on. The whole thing ends on a ludicrous and implausible note as Mike never actually entering the ring after all that build-up, which is enough to destroy much of the good will that Mamet has created by weaving such an intricate character-driven tale.

The Bottom Line:
If you're a Mamet fan, you might appreciate some of these characters and the ideas he's brought into this setting--and yeah, Mamet's dialogue is still great--but with far too many characters and way too much going on, it's a hard to follow film that ultimately ends in a predictable and unsatisfying place.

Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay (Opening Friday, April 25)

Rating: 8 out of 10
Cast:
John Cho as Harold Lee
Kal Penn as Kumar Patel
Rob Corddry as Ron Fox
Roger Bart as Dr. Beecher
Neil Patrick Harris as Neil Patrick Harris
Danneel Harris as Vanessa
David Krumholtz as Goldstein
Eddie Kaye Thomas as Rosenberg
Jack Conley as Deputy Frye
Eric Winter as Colton
Paula Garcés as Maria
Jon Reep as Raymus
Missi Pyle as Raylene
Mark Munoz as Cyrus
James Adomian as George W. Bush
Beverly D'Angelo as Sally
Echo Valley as Tits Hemmingway

Directed by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg

Summary:
More tasteless fun from the ethnic stoners who bring their own unique socio-political slant to the typical stoner road comedy.

Story:
Harold Lee and Kumar Patel (John Cho, Kal Penn) are on their way to Amsterdam, chasing after Harold's dream girl, but after an incident on an airplane, they're imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay as terrorists. Even though they're able to escape--as the title would suggest--they still have to face an overzealous federal agent (Rob Corddry) who'll stop at nothing to catch them and send them back into Gitmo.

Analysis:
As often as there are sequels to comedies that no one but the producers and their expensive trophy wives may want, and as many times as there are great comedies that never get much-deserved sequels, every once in a while the stars align and a genuinely funny but mostly overlooked comedy gets a deserved sequel that actually surpasses the original movie. That is certainly the case with "Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay," which follows where the story left off four years earlier in the theatrical flop "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle" with a much more political slant to mirror the climate in the country since George W. was reelected.

Writer/directors Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg certainly know their audience for this sequel, and it might not necessarily be the stoner fratboys some might expect. Certainly, there's an aspect of the movie that will appeal to the fans of Kevin Smith's sense of humor, but it's not just a series of gags and encounters like "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back." There's also a strong story that takes place the day after the last movie as Harold and Kumar's plans to go to Amsterdam gets sidetracked by the heightened air security and their ethnicity, as they're accused of being Arab and North Korean terrorists and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where they experience the horrors explored in many recent docs. The sequel also offers a surprising amount of romance for the duo, not just Harold chasing his dream girl Maria, but Kumar proves himself to be a romantic with his feelings for Vanessa (the absolutely adorable Daneel Harris), the ex-girlfriend who first got him high who's left her wild girl days behind her to marry an ultra-conservative jerk from Texas, who just happens to be the only guy who can get the duo out of their new mess.

Cho and Penn show a lot of growth as actors since the first movie, but surprisingly, Harold and Kumar don't imbibe in nearly as many drugs as they did in the first movie, maybe because they're too busy running for their life. The road comedy humor from the first movie is heightened by the fact that you have an Indian and a Korean traveling through the deep South, allowing them to play with Southern stereotypes, whether it's meeting a hunter or crashing a KKK meeting.

Most of the film's funniest wrongness comes in the form of Rob Corddry, a racist Federal agent who uses blatant cliches against the ethnic types he interrogates. He is absolutely hilarious when doing so, getting the biggest laughs in every scene, countered well by Roger Bart as his conscientious "good cop" partner.

There's a lot of silliness and dumb physical humor along the way--as much as you try to resist, you'll probably end up laughing anyway--but there's also enough sharp political commentary amidst the gratuitous nudity and the not so clever bathroom humor to not make you not feel so bad about it.

It's hard to determine whether this sequel works as a standalone movie, since some of the funniest bits are the nods to the first movie that only true fans will appreciate. There's lots of callbacks, and not just NPH (Neil Patrick Harris) who has a far bigger role as himself, a celebrity who gets more out of control the more drugs he takes. When he picks up the guys and treats them at a whorehouse, things go downhill from there. One of the funniest bits though is a flashback to years earlier when Harold first meets Vanessa and we get to see what the guys were like before they discovered marijuana.

The movie does lose a bit of steam as it goes along, maybe because some of the funniest jokes are in the first hour, but the whole things culminates in an appearance by the Commander in Chief that's more than slightly amusing even if it's not the most convincing look or sound-a-like.

The Bottom Line:
This may be the most deliberately unapologetic politically-incorrect movie ever made, and it's so wrong in so many ways. With the current political climate, this might be exactly what Americans need to be able to laugh with Harold and Kumar at our own social morays and ineptitude. Either way, this is easily the funniest movie since "Superbad" and a more than satisfying sequel.

88 Minutes (Opening Friday, April 18)

Rating: 5 out of 10
Cast:
Al Pacino as Dr. John Gramm
Alicia Witt as Kim Cummings
Amy Brenneman as Shelly Barnes
William Forsythe as Special Agent Frank Parks
Leelee Sobieski as Lauren Douglas
Benjamin McKenzie as Mike Stemp
Deborah Kara Unger as Carol Johnson
Neal McDonough as Jon Forster
Leah Cairns as Sara Pollard
Stephen Moyer as Guy LaForge

Review:
The Hollywood style of filmmaking has been widely and often criticized for its focus on style over substance, its obsession with marketing and packaging, trying to boil good stories down to just the right formula of plot points, act beats, story hooks and movie stars. Every so often, a film comes along that defies expectations and makes all those elements work together so seamlessly you can't help but think maybe those executives know something after all. More often, though, we get a bland piece of formulaic pabulum like "88 Minutes."

John Gramm (Al Pacino) is a forensic psychiatrist and the FBI's go-to guy when they need an expert to testify to a killer's motivations and thought process. When his testimony condemns would-be serial killer Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), Forster vows revenge, and it looks like he might get it when Gramm begins receiving threatening phone calls claiming he has only 88 minutes to live, despite the fact Forster has been locked away on death row for years.

Directed with unfeeling, uncaring, neutral in every way competence by veteran studio director Jon Avnet ("Up Close and Personal"), "88 Minutes" is a bland a piece of Hollywood dross as has ever been made. I can't say it's actually bad, that would require caring about it in some way that is impossible to do.

There has been some thought put into Gramm and his life. He's afraid of commitment and obsessed with security, escaping into a lonely life surrounded by attractive women he refuses to have any sort of real relationship with and a seemingly infinite number of digital locks. While Gramm himself harbors a lot of Hollywood's worst clichés for cop characters (afraid of commitment, outside the system, a maverick on the edge) the clues actually do add up to something a bit more than that, some deep emotional wounds of the past. We know because it's explained to us in the most heavy-handed fashion possible in the films perfect drumbeat of Syd Field style screenwriting: plot point, plot point, character moment, plot point, plot point, character moment.

And when I say character moment, what I really mean is back-story exposition, because the characters are about as flat as they get. What they do is who they are – one's a grad student, one's a lesbian assistant, one's a college dean, and that is the sum total of who they are. They're descriptors, not people.

It's no wonder this movie sat on a shelf for two years, I can't imagine anyone going to see it either. Pacino's not really the draw he used to be and he's certainly not doing his best work here. He's doing his usual wild man routine for most of the film, occasionally giving a glimpse of Gramm's intellect and tiredness of soul, but only occasionally. The rest of the time it's all autopilot.

"88 Minutes" is a textbook Hollywood thriller, in the worst possible sense of the phrase. If that's your thing, more power to you, but there's got to be better ways to spend your time.

The Forbidden Kingdom (Opening Friday, April 18)

Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Cast:
Jet Li as The Silent Monk
Jackie Chan as Lu Yan
Michael Angarano as Jason Tripitikas
Yifei Liu as Golden Sparrow
Collin Chou as Jade Warlord
Bingbing Li as Ni Chang
Morgan Benoit as Lupo
Deshun Wang as Jade Emperor

Review:
Essentially, it's "The Wizard of Oz" with kung-fu instead of singing and dancing.

Jason (Michael Angarano) is your average teenager in every meaning of the phrase, from his first forays with girls to his rich fantasy life, in Jason's case borne up by his love of the old kung fu movies he gets from the local pawn shop. It turns out his fantasy life might too rich, though, when a late night robbery goes horribly wrong and Jason wakes up to find himself actually in ancient mythological China.

As ideas go, it's not a bad one, but it is going to be entirely dependent on its execution, and that's where "The Forbidden Kingdom" fumbles a bit. It's dealing with a lot of clichés of big-budget Hollywood filmmaking and wuxia films, but lacks a lot of the charm of either.

Characterization is based largely on archetypes, which can work, but only if through a great deal of charisma, and casting that is spot on. Angarano plays Jason the awkward youth perfectly, it's a role he's been doing for almost ten years now and it's like he was born to do it. Unfortunately, it also makes it absolutely impossible to take him seriously when he starts doing kung fu.

Luckily (depending on your point of view) that doesn't really matter because while "The Forbidden Kingdom" seems to want to be a classic hero's journey, it certainly starts out that way, Jason stops being the 'hero' the second Jackie Chan shows up. Despite a lot of back-and-forthing from director Rob Minkoff, that never really changes, because "The Forbidden Kingdom" isn't really about Jason. It's about Jackie Chan and Jet Li being in the same film together, and that is it.

To be fair, Chan and Li appearing together are unquestionably "The Forbidden Kingdom's" biggest draw, and the filmmakers would fools to pretend otherwise. However, since they are the focus of the film, we quickly begin to wonder why Jason is around at all and what are we doing spending so much time with him. The idea seems to be for him to be a point of view character for American audiences and that it would be easier to empathize with an American teenager than with the actual stars of the movie, which begs the question why would they rely on their stars to sell the movie, but not to anchor the story. The result is, except for a pair of bookend sequences that are the weakest parts about the film, Jason spends most of his time getting thrown around or out of the way while Li and Chan go about the kung fu business.

Which it has to be said is as good as you might expect. Veteran choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping has lost none of skill and Chan and Li put their all into it, with some able help from Collin Chou ("The Matrix Reloaded") as the villainous Jade Warlord and his chief assassin, Bingbing Li. To their credit, Minkoff and screenwriter Joe Fusco haven't shied away from some of the over-the-top aspects of the wuxia genre, like Bingbing Li's prehensile hair, and Chinese mythology (the plot hinges around "Journey to the West's" Monkey King) that haven't been widely sampled in America yet. It's actually a pretty faithful rendition of the genre, albeit one that has been heavily Americanized. But even in the kung fu, "The Forbidden Kingdom's" greatest strength is also its biggest weakness.

Because Chan and Li hold such stature in the kung fu genre, a lot of very careful positioning is taken to make sure that one never tops the other. The result is that both are playing versions of the same character, each in their own way; Chan does a version of his Drunken Master character, and Li's monk is not too far off from "Once Upon a Time in China." The idea of them as archetypes from their own movies actually works, it fits perfectly with the idea of the world as a reflection of Jason's unconscious (and it also lets Minkoff get away with some atrocious in-universe rule breaking as the characters switch back and forth from Chinese to English at whim). But the end result is that one of these characters is redundant, and neither can ever get the better of the other. Even their much ballyhooed fight sequence, which is quite good, is a very careful balancing act aimed at making sure neither star looks bad, and that keeps it from being what it could have been, and that sums up the film as well. It pales, for instance, in comparison to a similarly built up sequence between Li and Donnie Yen in "Hero." The lack of conflict is a bad way to try and create drama, and it shows.

The filmmakers must realize this because they end up relying on a lot of tried and true (by which I mean boring) tricks to get them through from one action sequence to the next. Tremendous amount of exposition to try and create the appearance of conflict - it seems like every time someone turns around they have a prophecy to relate, and a token love (Yifei Liu) who appears out of thin air and adds absolutely nothing to the story, except a girl. An argument could be made that his fits into the movie as Jason's fantasy idea as well, but it's all just a little too bland.

If you're a big Jackie Chan and/or Jet Li fan, you might as well forget everything I just said. This movie was made for you and you should go see it on the big screen once. But because of a complete lack of storytelling effort from the filmmakers, there's no reason to ever see it more than once.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Opening Friday, April 18)

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Cast:
Ben Stein
Richard Dawkins
Eugeni Scott
John Lennox
David Berlinski
Richard Sternberg
Caroline Crocker
Guillermo Gonzalez
Mark Souder
Christopher Hitchens

Directed by Nathan Frankowski

Summary:
The filmmakers' intentions are kept deliberately vague--is this about free speech or about teaching religion in the classroom?--but it's a surprisingly entertaining and informative doc that at least tries to address the debate over intelligent design from another angle.

Story:
Ben Stein takes a look at intelligent design and how scientists and teachers who've dared to address it have come under attack from the scientific community using Darwin's theories of evolution.

Analysis:
The subject of intelligent design is one that has sparked a lot of controversy and hopefully, this review won't bring out the loonies on either side of the debate, because personally, I don't feel like religion and faith is something that can or should be argued or debated on the internet, or anywhere else for that matter. And yet, this film has already been the center of many heated debates and anger from the scientific community, making it difficult to analyze it without taking into account one's own opinions about creation, evolution, God and religion.

The crux of the film centers around a series of high-profile firings in the academic world of respected scientists and educators who dared breach the subject of intelligent design. Actor, comedian and reputed intellectual Ben Stein decided to investigate these incidents, taking the Michael Moore approach by providing the film's personality as he travels around the globe talking to scientists and philosophers on both sides of the heated debate. Essentially, intelligent design tends to be immediately written off as "creationism," that it comes strictly from a religious faith-based point of view that has no business in science. Stein tries to prove otherwise by showing how the scientific community has been closed-minded in their treatment of those who address it while following their own "theories" of evolution.

On the surface, Ben Stein seems to be pushing for open debate and discussion rather than the scientific community bullying anyone who offers disparate ideas, but he doesn't exactly go about this in the best way, especially when the film shows Darwin's influence on the Nazi ideals and comparing Darwinists to communists, both extremely flawed and overly flip arguments that hurt the film more than it helps. Stein's intentions are also somewhat deceptive, because while he never outright says "intelligent design should be taught in the classrooms," the film's marketing campaign seems to say otherwise, something that's difficult to ignore when attempting to analyze the film on its own merits.

It's far too easy to superimpose one's own agenda or beliefs on a film like this due to the amount of contradictory information being spooled to the viewer via Stein's interviews. "Expelled" will probably be embraced by religious fundamentalists as surely as it will be trashed by the liberal media, both for the wrong reasons, and instead of solving the problems, it will just add to them, since the people in the scientific community who might gain something from being more open-minded will already have written this film off as propaganda.

There's more than a little irony to the way things have changed in the hundreds of years since the time when scientists were being persecuted by the Church, and going by Stein's take on the matter, things have turned fully the other way. This seems the most evident in the film's climax where Stein faces off with Richard Dawkins, a scientist who has gone so far as to disprove the existence of G-d--we'll probably have to read his book for his arguments--though by that point, we're no closer to getting to the bottom of why the educators were fired.

Technically, the film could be better, as the camerawork is somewhat shaky during the interviews, a problem that's resolved as the film progresses. Too much cutesy film footage is edited into the interviews to try to keep things moving at a brisk pace amidst a lot of scientific babble, but this often colors the information and responses to try and sway viewers towards the film's biased viewpoint.

Personally, I don't think either camp's argument is completely on the money and ultimately, the film's message about opening communication between the two camps seems like the most viable solution. Although this documentary does little to prove or disprove any of the theories (scientific or otherwise) from either camp--many of which you'd have to be a MENSA member to fully understand--one probably shouldn't write the movie off merely based on their own personal beliefs. If nothing else, it's an often entertaining conversation and debate starter, which might have been Ben Stein's purpose all along even if there might have also been ulterior motives lying beneath the film's heady surface.