I don’t think I would have liked this even if I was still a teenager, it was just too… stupidly annoying. Imagine The Forbidden Kingdom meets Karate Kid , then imagine ruining them both. Completely.
Some things weren’t too bad, like the start (when it was still a fantasy videogame) or the villain (Dave Bautista was honestly the nicest bit of the movie).
The story is very simple: a modern kid lives alone with his mother and has money problem, and also bullies are after him. He works for a Chinese man who gives him a family heirloom. He is transported to ancient China and fights to save the pretty princess and go back home, where he will save the day buying the house for his mom and stand up to his bullies, and of course he also gets the girl at the end.
In details:
A man giving a precious family heirloom to a kid who works for him, who wouldn’t do that, still, we could accept this. Jack takes it home in his room. At night he wakes up to a sword to his throat. A man dressed like Ancient China asks for the black knight and Jack explains that it’s him, but only in the videogame he plays. The warriors says that he has no choice (NO CHOICE) and leaves him to guard the princess life. I mean, really??? He leaves the life of the princess in the hands of a teenager who can only play videogames and run away from bullies. AND doesn’t seem too bright to me, because if you can’t stand up to bullies and you know you will run away, then I suggest you avoid them altogether, why does he keep pissing them off and then run for his life? We saw him arriving with his bike and seeing this Travis with his friends, yet he didn’t change zone, he had to go in there, promptly making Travis fall and then escaping… sigh.
Anyway.
He’s left alone with this princess who asks for food then sleeps on his bed and in the morning goes in the back to excercise, while we should laugh at his attempts to shield her from his mom’s eyes. He doesn’t let Her Highness Su Lin out of the house dressed like that, so what other choice does he have other than buy her new stuff?
:-/ Didn’t they have money trouble? He could get her a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, instead he lets her choose…. and she comes out with she shortest shorts you can imagine, a shirt draped around her hips, sunglasses… straight out of a teen fashion magazine :-/
Since it’s against the law to touch her, he runs around trying to prevent anyone from touching her (it’s understandable that people might try it, people touch each other shaking hands and stuff like that all the time, but why did she seem like she was encouraging it? Step away!
Of course that’s the friend with his vulgar jokes, but that’s just teenagers stuff, nothing big.
When warriors attack at his house, the princess seems quiet capable to defend herself, but there’s more of them and Jack isn’t really helpful, so they succeed in taking her away, passing thru the gate. The first time this happened Jack could see nothing inside it, now he looks and there’s a very useful ladder that he can use to follow them!
But when he gets there there’s only the warrior Zhao with a wizard, who saves them for the moment, since outside that door there’s lots and lots of enemy, but then disappears (it seems like he’s the only wizard in this story, so why doesn’t he do more? Why rely on a kid if you have such a powerful wizard? I mean, he stopped time so that dozens of warriors were like frozen still !!! )
Jack and Zhao begin their journey together, and it’s more annoying than anything. Jack, like the little kid that he is, keeps saying things like that he should take time to himself and have fun (which is what people without responsibilities find so easy to say) and judges him because he can’t breakdance (I have no words). Zhao teaches him one thing, since Jack insists he needs to learn, and that is to keep his arms in a circle, the basis for all martial arts, and that’s it. They never train, not even for a day, and yet later on Jack will do just as much as everyone else, against countless enemies… sigh. Ok, I understand that we only see bits of their journey so they might have found the time to train a little bit, but come on, not much since they had to rescue the princess, and sleep and eat, not really all that much free time there !
Meanwhile the princess is held hostage but still treated like a princess, this is a kid movie, nobody touches her which is good. The bad guy wants to marry her to become the next emperor.
Jack and Zhao find her and save her - Jack is the first she sees and she’s all honey and in love already *rolling eyes. Really ??? Come on, stop with this thing that every girl must fall for the first guy who saves her !
Anyway, chaos ensues and they all fight. Jack is like a warrior now, and for some reason the wizard just uses a bit of powder here and there doing just a little bit, why doesn’t he freeze them like he did the others? So that they could escape easily?
Anyway, Jack and Su Lin escape but when he wakes up she’s chained and the villain is there already (how quick !!! :-/ ) and it’s the same scene from his videogame, and he fights the leader of the bad guys, that big man with years of experience, and he wins and kills him, and the kid is not affected at all by the fact that he killed a man and simply frees her.
Finally free, Su Lin is crowned the new empress, and she thanks Jack by kissing him, leaving very clear evidence of her lipstick on him without saying anything, so he goes out and the guards want to kill him for touching her. *rollingeyes
The wizard has another gate for him so he can go back home, and he keeps thinking about the story and spends the night on his computer writing a videogame of his adventure… but wait, the one scene he played at the beginning, was from a game he bought or one he created? Anyway, in one night he creates a videogame and in the morning he’s all fresh and energetic and he goes to sell it, and he goes back home with a 25.000$ check, just like that. Wow, what big company wouldn’t let a kid in and give him a check in no time, without even an appointment or anything?
Now they can pay for their house and all is well.
We see Jack buying an icecream and meeting a very modern-looking Su Lin who says that she made a law to let anyone have a vacation, even the empress… sure, ok, that’s why kids should not be let in charge of anything I guess. According to this movie, that is.
It ends with the warriors breakdancing, which is a very sad view.
Awful. Boring. Stupid.
ITA the warriors gate
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