Electric Dreamstate

Jackie Chan and Jet Li are the pillars of the Hong Kong and Chinese marital arts flicks making there way to North America in the last fifteen years or so. Too bad that they waited until they were old to team up.

The Plot:
Jason Tripitikas (Michael Angarano, the poor man's Shia LaBeouf) is a kid from Boston who likes Kung Fu movies. He gets roughed-up by street thugs, finds a magical staff and falls off a roof. When he wakes up he's in The Forbidden Kingdom, a version of ancient mythological China. Now, with the help of a drunk and possibly immortal vagabond (Chan), a kind-of assholish monk (Li) and a love interest who talks only in the third person (Yifei Liu), he must return the magic staff to the Monkey King (also Li) and defeat the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou).

Good:
• The action is better than most American produced martial arts movies (this is probably because of the Chinese funding and choreography).
• It's certainly Jackie Chan's best American movie.
• The pace is somewhat breezy. It doesn't drag.
• It plays the hero's quest angle fairly well.
• It's kind of fun how they explain Chan and Li playing multiple roles.

Bad:
• You can really see the political aspect between how much presence Jackie Chan and Jet Li have in the film. About 20 minutes in it seems strange that Li's monk character hasn't been introduced yet (although he has showed up as the Monkey King), and I realized that it was because that would have unbalanced the movie towards Li and away from Chan. On the same note, the fight between Li and Chan is quite good (considering how old they are), but ends in such a draw as to seem pointless.
• The story arc of the movie is fairly predictable.
• The white lead is bland.
• When kung fu shows up in the "real world" at the end of the movie, it seems out of place.

Overall:
Not something to go out of your way to see if you aren't a fan of the genre, but not crazy terrible like some were predicting it would be. It does work fairly well as an actiony kids movie.