The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

"The Forbidden Kingdom" could have been historic: Jet Li and Jackie Chan going head-to-head on film. And they do have one beautiful fight scene as (fan boy alert!) Li's Silent Monk battles Chan's drunken master warrior battle over a sought-after mystical stick. There always is a magic something in these films, stick, sword, carrot. Whatev. See, the rest of this film, directed by Rob Minkoff, is a wash of piss, an inexplicable combination of "The Never-Ending Story" and every Chinese martial arts fantasy film ever made as a Boston nerd (Michael Angarano) is magically whisked back to ancient China to, you know, man up, and meet Jet Li and Jackie Chan. This is pure fantasy for any boy or girl who longs to kick butt. I get it. But even the boy inside me left icked out by a scene where Li pisses in the face of a desperately thirsty Chan. And Chan swallows with no apparent reaction. Gotta say, I didn't see that coming, and hope never to again. That kind of shit -- pardon me -- passes in hard-core excremental porn, but here ... No. C-